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QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY. 


1— The   Independent    Movement  in  New  York,  as  an 


7- 

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9- 

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11- 

12- 

13- 

14- 

15- 

16- 
17- 

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GIFT  OF 

SEELEY  W.  MLDD 

and 

GEORGE  I.  COCHRAN     MEYER  ELSASSER 

UR.  JOHN  R.  HAYNES    WILLIAM  L.  UONNOLD 

JAMES  R.  MARTIN         MRS.  JOSEPH  F. SARTORI 

to  tin 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA 

SOUTHERN  BRANCH 


JOHN  FISKE 


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BY   THE   SAME    AUTHOR. 


THE    DISTRIBUTION     OF    PRODUCTS.      Or,   The 

Mechanism   and  the   Metaphysics  of  Exchange.     Three  Es- 
says : 

What  Makes  the  Rate  of  Wages  ? 

What  Is  a  Bank  ? 

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Second  edition,  much  enlarged.     Octavo,  pp.  v.   +  365     .     $l  50 

"  His  remarks  on  the  legislators  of  the  country  are  vigorous  and  refreshing. 
The  book,  notwithstanding  its  statistics,  is  exceedingly  interesting  and  is  the 
ablest  defense  of  capital  that  we  have  seen." — Chicago  Advance. 

'•  We  are  glad  to  have  Mr.  Atkinson's  book  for  its  valuable  statistics,  its 
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science. "  —  Graph  ic. 

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Capital  and  Labor." — Spectator^  Boston. 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  Publishers, 

new   YORK  AND  LONDON. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS 


HOW   IT    IS    NOW   DIVIDED 

WHAT  PART  OF  THE  PRESENT  HOURS  OF  LABOR 
CAN  NOW  BE  SPARED 


EDWARD    ATKINSON 


"Mankind  is  as  lazy  as  it  dares  to  be" 

— R.  W.  Emerson,  quoted  by  President  Garfield 


AN   ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  BEFORE  THE  CENTRAL  LABOR  LYCEUM 

OF  BOSTON,  ON  SUNDAY  EVENING 

MAY  I,   1887 


NEW    YORK    &    LONDON 

G.    P.    PUTNAM'S    SONS 

ilht  fmicktrboclicr  ^rtss 

1887 


80426 


Copyright,  1887,  bv 
G.  P.  PUTNAiM'S  SONS 


INTRODUCTION. 


At  one  of  the  Sunday  evening  meetings  of  the 
Central  Labor  Union  of  Boston,  one  of  the  speak- 
ers, Mr.  N.  E.  Chase,  expressed  a  wish  to  debate 
the  eight-hour  question  with  the  mayor  of  the  city 
or  with  myself. 

As  I  have  always  believed  it  to  be  a  true  method 
-to   meet  the  complaints  of  workmen,  of  injustice  in 
cvjthe  distribution  of  wealth,  by  plain  and  simple  argu- 
r-  ments  based  on  facts,  rather  than  by  alleging  that 
workmen  ought  to  be  contented  with  their  condition 
•^  and    to    be    satisfied    with    the    abundance    of  the 
jrj  means  of  subsistence  which  is  at  their  disposal  in  this 
prosperous  country,  I  very  gladly  accepted  this  in- 
vitation. 

The  discussion  was  therefore  appointed  for  Sun- 
day evening.  May  ist,  under  the  auspices  of  the 
Central  Labor  Lyceum. 

Mr.  E.  M.  Chamberlin  was  designated  to  reply 
to  me,  and  in  order  that  he  might  have  full  oppor- 
tunity to  state  the  views  of  those  who  advocate 
eight-hour  legislation,  a  copy  of  my  address  was 
furnished  him  two  days  in  advance  of  the  meeting. 


4  INTRODUCTION. 

By  his  consent  his  reply  is  incorporated  in  this  little 
volume,  together  with  my  rejoinder. 

In  this,  as  in  other  meetintrs  of  workmen  which  I 
have  addressed,  I  have  always  secured  the  most 
earnest  attention,  and  have  received  the  utmost 
courtesy.  I  trust  that  this  example  may  be  fol- 
lowed, and  that  in  place  of  bitter  contention  there 
may  be  friendly  discussion  of  all  the  subjects  which 
are  at  issue  under  the  general  term  of  the  Labor 
Question. 

To  those  who  are  somewhat  too  apt  to  deny  that 
there  is  any  such  question,  I  may  suggest  that  they 
had  better  try  an  experiment.  Find  something  to  do 
which  is  as  monotonous  as  the  work  of  the  mule  spin- 
ner, walking  many  miles  a  day  with  the  head  bent 
over  the  mule  carriage,  mending  the  ends  of  broken 
threads  ;  work  ten  continuous  hours  on  some  little 
part  which  constitutes  perhaps  the  sixtieth  part  of  a 
complex  machine  ;  pay  a  part  of  the  extreme  penalty 
which  the  modern  division  of  labor  has  imposed  as  the 
price  of  abundance  ;  try  the  work  of  the  factory  and 
the  life  of  the  tenement  house  for  a  single  year, — then 
one  may  be  qualified  to  look  upon  life  with  the  long- 
ing for  more  leisure,  for  more  variety,  and  for  better 
opportunity  which  lies  at  the  bottom  of  the  struggle 
for  shorter  hours  of  work,  however  misdirected  the 
efforts  may  be  of  those  who  now  subject  themselves 
to  the  arbitrary  methods  of  Labor  Associations  as 
now  organized.    Yet,  in  this  very  effort  to  organize, 


INTRODUCTION. 


5 


have  we  not  the  promise  of  progress  in  the  more 
intelligent  study  of  problems  which  will  force  every 
thoughtful  man  to  give  them  attention,  long  after 
those  who  are  now  beginning  to  seek  their  solu- 
tion have  found  leisure  and  rest  in  the  life  which  is 
to  come. 

Edward  Atkinson. 


Ont  Million  Dollars  of  capital  might 
17,500,000  yards  of  medium  shirting  in  a 
product  would  be  substantially  as  follows 


\TKINSON,  Bo! 


o 


"^^mm 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


Ladies,  Gentlemen,  and  Fellow- Workmen  : 

I  am  very  glad  to  meet  you  on  the  evening  of  a 
day  which  is,  or  ought  to  be,  to  all  of  us,  whatever 
our  faith  may  be,  a  day  of  rest  and  of  re-Creation.  It 
is  my  purpose  to  show  you  how  the  great  forces — 
the  higher  laws  which  govern  the  relations  of  men, 
to  which  all  the  statutes  or  laws  of  the  State  and  all 
the  rules  or  by-laws  of  your  labor  associations  must 
of  necessity  be  adjusted,  if  they  are  to  have  any 
duration — are  steadily,  surely,  and  slowly  working 
to  the  benefit  of  the  great  mass  of  the  people  who 
do  the  actual  work  of  life  either  with  their  heads  or 
with  their  heads  and  their  hands  combined,  or  how- 
ever they  get  their  living  ;  slowly  but  surely  securing 
to  them  in  this  free  country,  whatever  the  case  may 
be  in  others,  a  constantly  larger  and  increasing  share 
of  a  larger  and  larger  annual  product. 

Even  to  those  who  make  the  Sunday  more  of  a 
holiday  than  a  holy  day,  I  may  give  a  text  to  this 
sermon  on  labor  :  Do  justly.  Love  mercy.  Walk 
humbly.     These  are  the  laws  of  humanity,  however 


8  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

they  originated.  There  are  none  who  need  to  think 
of  them  more  than  some  of  you  who  try  to  prevent 
other  men  from  getting  their  Hving  in  their  own  way 
— who  would  deprive  them  of  their  Hberty  of  action, 
and  who  put  a  bad  name  upon  them  if  they  don't  do 
what  you  undertake  to  tell  them  to  do. 

To  such  as  these  I  commend  the  middle  part  of 
my  text — Love  mercy.  I  commend  the  whole  text 
to  those  who  say  that  life  is  a  contest  between  labor 
and  capital. 

Look  at  the  picture  upon  the  wall,  in  which  you 
see  so  much  deep  red.  It  looks  like  the  flag  of  the 
Commune.  It  is  the  flag  of  a  kind  of  communism 
w^hich  is  justified  by  science.  It  indicates  the  results 
which  come  from  the  peaceful  development  of  order 
and  industry,  or  which  will  grow  out  of  a  true  regard 
to  the  harmony  of  interest  between  capital  and 
labor.  These  lines  in  different  colors  carry  with 
them  the  promise  of  a  time,  not  now  very  distant, 
when  a  good  living  will  be  so  sure  to  him  or  her 
who  has  fair  ability,  good  health,  and  a  true  charac- 
ter, with  moderate  aptitude  for  the  work  which  is 
always  waiting  to  be  done — I  say  it  gives  the  prom- 
ise of  a  time  when  it  may  not  pay  to  be  rich,  if  one 
is  content  with  common  comfort  and  common  wel- 
fare. I  shall  try  to  give  you  a  study  of  life  and 
work  in  a  few  plain,  short  words. 

I  must  tell  you  who  I  am  before  I  begin  my  talk, 
I  am  not  a  Knight  of  Labor,  but  a  Squire  of  Work  ; 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  g 

and,  if  I  am  not  wrong,  the  squires  will  get  ahead 
of  the  knights  in  the  long  run. 

Not  long  since,  Mr.  Chase  spoke  to  you  upon  the 
subject  of  making  a  day's  work  eight  hours.  He 
said  he  would  like  to  debate  this  question  with 
Mayor  O'Brien  or  with  me  ;  and  for  that  reason  I 
am  here  to  speak  to  you.  I  shall  speak  on  a  broader 
question  than  that  of  eight  hours,  for  that  is  only  a 
small  part  of  the  whole  subject  which  is  before  you. 

A  great  many  of  you  work  too  hard  and  too  long. 
No  one  can  deny  that.  You  don't  get  as  good  a 
living  as  you  might  have.  There  is  no  doubt  about 
that.  You  don't  want  to  work  more  than  eight  hours 
a  day  if  you  can  help  it.  Neither  do  I.  I  don't 
work  more  than  eight  hours  a  day  in  order  to  get 
a  living,  and  you  do.  Why  should  you  not  con- 
trol your  own  time  as  well  as  I  ?  You  can,  if  you 
choose  to. 

The  only  thing  that  all  men  enjoy  alike,  the  only 
element  of  life  which  is  common  to  every  man, 
woman,  and  child,  and  which  all  share  and  share 
alike,  is  ^I'me.  Why  should  I  be  able  to  get  my 
living  in  eight  hours  a  day,  or  less,  while  most  of 
you  work  ten  hours,  some  of  you  twelve,  and  nearly 
all  your  wives  fourteen  hours  a  day?  I  suppose 
some  one  will  say  that  I  am  a  capitalist,  and  that 
you  are  workmen ;  but  that  is  not  the  whole  of  it.  I 
am  not  a  capitalist  in  the  sense  of  being  a  rich  man. 
To  be  sure,  I  have  saved  some  capital,  and  I  am 


10  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

very  glad  of  it ;  but  I  don't  live  on  the  income  of 
my  capital.  I  save  that,  and  add  it  to  what  I  had 
before.  I  live  on  my  work.  Why  should  I  get 
more  for  m}'  work  than  you  do  ?  I  work  with  my 
head  only,  and  you  work  with  your  hands.  Some 
of  you  work  with  your  heads  as  well  as  your  hands, 
and  some  of  you  don't  use  your  hands  at  all ;  you 
stand  by  and  watch  a  machine,  and  your  work  only 
is  to  see  that  the  machine  does  its  work  well. 

Now,  in  what  do  we  differ  ?  I  sell  my  work  for 
what  some  other  men  are  willing  to  pay  for  it.  If 
they  don't  pay  me  as  much  as  I  think  my  work  is 
worth,  then  I  say  :  "  Good-by,  I  will  do  something 
else  ;  I  won't  work  for  you  any  longer."  You  sell 
your  time  to  another  man,  and  he  pays  you  what 
your  work  is  worth  to  him  ;  and  if  you  think  it  is 
worth  more  you  can  say  "  Good-by  "  to  him  as  he 
can  to  you ;  and  you  can  do  something  else  if  you 
know  how  and  have  saved  some  capital  to  tide  over 
with  while  you  are  out  of  work.  Perhaps  he  would 
be  very  glad  to  pay  you  more  for  your  work 
if  he  could.  Why  can't  he  ?  Because  the  people 
who  buy  the  goods  you  make  and  which  he  sells 
will  not  pay  any  higher  price  for  them.  It  is  the 
price  of  the  product  that  fixes  the  rate  both  of  wages 
and  profits.  Who  are  the  people  who  buy  the  goods 
at  the  low  price  which  only  gives  you  small  wages  ? 
Well,  nine-tenths  of  them  are  working  people  just 
like    yourselves.     When   you   put   up   the  price   of 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  II 

what  Other  workmen  buy,  and  do  not  put  up  the 
price  of  what  they  make,  then  you  tax  them  to  get 
a  better  Hving  yourselves.  Is  that  fair?  It  is  just 
so  about  eight  hours.  If  you  cut  down  the  work  in 
factories,  in  workshops,  and  in  the  building  trades 
to  eight  hours,  you  cut  down  the  product ;  then 
there  will  be  fewer  goods,  fewer  stoves,  fewer  tools, 
fewer  houses,  and  that  means  a  higher  price  and  a 
higher  rent ;  because,  if  you  count  all  the  mechanics 
and  all  who  work  in  the  factories,  whose  time  can 
be  shortened  by  rule,  there  are  only  about  200  in 
each  1 ,000  of  those  who  work.  Who  are  the  rest  ? 
Why,  the  farmers,  the  railroad  men,  the  shopkeep- 
ers and  their  clerks,  and  also  the  wives  of  all  the 
mechanics  who  have  never  been  counted.  Can  you 
reach  them  by  any  eight-hour  law  ?  Who  proposes 
an  eight-hour  law  -for  women  in  the  work  of  their 
own  households  ? 

Is  it  a  fair  deal,  when  you  make  a  law  of  the 
State,  or  a  by-law  of  the  trades-union,  or  in  any 
other  way,  that  makes  the  many  work  harder  in 
order  that  the  few  may  work  less  ?  That  is  not 
what  you  mean,  but  that  is  what  you  do,  or  would 
do  if  you  could.  You  say  there  is  enough  product 
made  now  in  eight  hours  to  give  every  one  a  good 
living,  if  it  were  only  divided  on  the  square.  Some 
of  you  say  that  if  you  could  get  hold  of  what  capital- 
ists get  out  of  the  product  and  divide  it  among  work- 
men,  eight  hours'  work,  or  less,  would   give    you 


12  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

just  as  good  a  living,  or  a  better  one,  than  you  get 
now. 

Well,  that  is  a  question  of  fact.  It  either  is  so, 
or  it  isn't.     I  say  it  isn't,  and  I  am  going  to  prove  it. 

I  tell  you  the  waste  by  capitalists  is  nothing  com- 
pared to  the  \vaste  by  workmen  ;  and  so  far  as  I  can 
see  there  is  no  way  in  which  to  shorten  the  hours 
of  labor  except  to  do  more  or  to  make  more  in  less 
time  ;  because  labor  now  consumes  so  nearly  the 
whole  of  what  there  is,  that  if  all  the  waste  of  rich 
men,  or  by  rich  men,  were  taken  from  them  and 
divided  among  the  workmen,  it  would  not  make  a 
difference  of  fifteen  minutes  a  iday.  If  it  were  divided 
in  money,  it  would  not  give  the  whole  body  of  the 
workmen  the  price  of  an  extra  glass  of  beer  a  day. 
If  it  were  not  divided  even,  then  the  deal  would  be 
no  more  fair  than  it  is  now — would  it  .'*  Lastly,  if 
by  taking  away  the  profits  from  capital  you  lost  the 
service  of  rich  men,  you  would  be  compelled  to 
work  a  grreat  deal  harder  and  a  o-reat  deal  lonijer 
than  you  do  now  in  order  to  get  as  much. 

I  tell  you,  my  friends,  when  you  are  talking  about 
the  wages  due  to  laborers,  you  had  better  measure 
the  wages  due  to  capitalists,  to  inventors,  to  men  of 
science,  to  the  men  who  work  with  their  heads.  It 
is  to  them  you  owe  the  fact  that  you  can  now  get  twice 
as  much  out  of  ten  hours'  work  as  men  and  women 
could  get  fifty  years  ago  out  of  twelve,  thirteen,  and 
fourteen.     Labor,    without   capital,    counts    one    in 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  1 3 

production,  and  with  capital  it  sometimes  counts  lOO. 
Can  the  loo  manage  the  capital  as  well  as  the  one? 
No.  If  they  could,  you  would  all  work  on  the  co- 
operative plan.  The  reason  that  you  do  not  co-operate 
now  is  that  you  cannot  in  that  way  get  as  much  out 
of  your  work  as  you  do  now  out  of  your  wages. 

All  this  talk  about  wage  slavery  is  nonsense. 
There  is  no  slave  labor,  no  compulsion  in  this 
country  now,  unless  it  is  the  compulsion  of  the 
Knights  of  Labor,  and  that  is  pretty  much  played 
out  already. 

You  see  I  talk  plainly ;  that's  what  you  want, 
isn't  it  ? 

You  want  facts,  and  I  am  going  to  give  them  to 
you.  Some  of  my  friends  began  to  chaff  me  the 
other  day  when  they  heard  I  was  coming  here  to 
speak,  and  one  said  I  wouldn't  dare  tell  you  the  truth. 
I  said  I  would.  I  told  that  man  he  was  a  condemned 
fool  if  he  hadn't  sense  enough  to  see  that  what  work- 
men want  more  than  any  other  class  of  men  is  solid 
truth  and  hard  facts,  no  matter  where  they  hit.  Isn't 
that  so  ?     If  not,  I  had  better  go  home. 

Now,  I  am  not  a  big  capitalist ;  but  let  us  suppose 
that  I  were  one.  Suppose  I  did  own  a  big  cotton 
mill  that  would  cost  a  million  dollars.  Suppose  that 
I  owned  the  whole  of  it,  and  suppose  you  were  cot- 
ton mill  hands  ;  let's  start  square  on  that.  I  wish  I 
did  own  such  a  cotton  mill ;  I  would  run  it  just  as 
the  mills  are  run  to-day  by   other  people  ;    and   I 


14 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS, 


will  soon  show  you  how  much  better  that  way  is 
than  any  other  way  we  have  yet  found  out.  We 
may  find  a  better  way,  but  we  haven't  yet.  I  want 
to  start  square,  just  as  I  did  down  in  the  Senate 
Chamber  of  Georgia  a  few  years  ago.  I  was  asked 
to  speak  to  the  Governor  of  the  State  and  other 
officers  ;  to  some  members  of  the  Senateof  Georgia  ; 
to  the  United  States  senators  and  some  men  who 
had  been,  including  ex-Senator  Toombs,  who  wanted 
to  call  the  roll  of  his  slaves  on  Bunker  Hill,  but  who 
never  found  out  the  way  to  do  it.  There  were  about 
sixty  men  in  the  room,  and  I  told  them  that  I  wanted 
to  start  square  with  them.  I  said  :  "  I  am  an  old-time 
Abolitionist  ;  I  was  a  Free-Soiler  ;  I  helped  to  fit 
out  John  Brown  with  Sharp's  rifles  for  Kansas,  and 
now  I  am  a  Democrat."  I  said  :  "  No  man  has  a 
right  to  call  himself  a  Democrat  who  is  not  willing  to 
give  every  other  man  an  even  chance  to  get  a  living 
and  to  vote  without  any  distinction  of  race,  color, 
or  station  in  life.  Now,"  said  I,  "if  I  speak,  this 
is  my  platform.  Do  you  want  to  hear  me  ?  If  you 
don't,  say  so  now,"  Well,  they  did  want  to  hear 
me,  and  I  gave  them  some  hard  facts,  which  have  not 
been  without  good  results,  either  in  Georgia  or  in 
other  parts  of  the  South. 

I  want  to  be  just  as  square  with  you,  and,  although 
I  am  not  a  big  capitalist,  I  am  a  capitalist  compared 
to  some  of  you.  I  dare  say  I  earn  ten  times  as  much 
in  a  year  by  my  work  as  most  of  the  men  in  this 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  1 5 

room,  and  I  don't  work  over  eight  hours  a  day  to 
get  a  Hving.  When  I  work  over  eight  hours  a  day 
I  work  for  the  fun  of  it — studying  labor  problems, 
making  speeches  on  the  eight-hour  craze,  trying  to 
find  out  what  the  Knights  of  Labor  really  mean,  and 
all  such  questions. 

I  will  go  one  step  further.  There  is  not  a  man 
or  woman  in  this  room  who  does  not  pay  me  some- 
thing every  year.  Now,  if  you  want  to  know  why 
you  pay  me,  and  how  you  pay  me,  and  what  I  do 
for  you,  and  how  I  earn  it,  I  will  go  on  with  my 
speech.     If  you  don't  want  to  hear  it,  I  won't. 

You  observe,  that  I  must  use  the  personal  pro- 
noun "  I."  It  is  you  and  I  who  have  got  to  talk 
this  out,  and  not  somebody  else.  I  can  earn 
enough  for  all  my  wants  in  less  than  eight  hours  a 
day  ;  and  some  of  you  cannot.  Why  not  ?  Is  it  my 
fault  or  my  neighbor's  fault  that  you  don't  get  enough 
to  live  in  comfort  without  working-  more  than  we  do? 
Are  you  poor  because  some  other  fellow  is  rich  ? 
I  say  "  no,"  but  some  of  you  say  "  yes  ;  "  now  who 
is  right  ?  Before  I  get  through  maybe  I  can  prove 
even  to  you  that  you  had  better  pay  me  twice  as 
much  as  you  do  rather  than  not  pay  me  at  all. 

My  regular  work  is  to  stop  the  cotton  and  woollen 
mills  from  being  burned  up,  in  which  the  cotton  and 
woollen  goods  of  which  your  clothes  are  made  were 
spun  and  woven.  The  more  mills  we  save  from  fire, 
the  more  goods  you  have,  and  the  lower  price  you 


1 6  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

pay  for  them.  I  am  paid  for  that,  and  my  men  are 
paid  for  that ;  and  a  part  of  what  we  cost  goes  into 
every  yard  of  cotton  and  woollen  cloth  that  you 
wear.  The  rent  of  the  office  which  I  use,  and  the 
rent  of  the  land  on  which  the  building-  stands,  is 
charged  to  the  cost  of  the  cloth,  and  before  you  can 
buy  the  cloth  you  pay  your  share  of  that  rent.  The 
land  is  worth  $20  or  $30  a  foot.  Suppose  all  the 
taxes  were  put  on  the  land,  then  the  tax  would  go 
into  the  rent,  and  the  rent  would  ofo  into  the  cost  of 
the  cloth,  and  you  would  pay  it.  Watch  the  taxes  ; 
don't  pay  too  much. 

Now,  I  claim,  for  every  cent  you  pay  me,  I  save 
you  ten.  I  say  that  for  every  cent  that  almost  every 
great  capitalist  receives  workmen  are  saved  ten 
cents,  more  or  less,  somehow  or  other.  I  will  except 
the  capitalists  who  make  rum.  If  you  will  have  the 
rum,  they  will  make  it  for  you  and  you  will  waste 
your  money  on  it.  That  is  your  lookout  and  theirs. 
I  don't  make  rum  and  I  don't  sell  it.  I  say  that 
every  capitalist  who  puts  his  money  into  useful 
work,  into  cloth,  food,  fuel,  metals  and  the  like,  saves 
every  workman  a  great  deal  more  than  he  takes 
from  him.  The  poor  are  not  poor  because  the  rich 
are  rich.  The  poor  are  not  poor  because  capital 
takes  a  bigger  share  than  it  ought.  The  poor  are 
a  great  deal  less  poor  and  a  great  deal  less  numer- 
ous than  they  would  be,  except  for  the  service 
of  capital,   of  which    they  enjoy    the    greater    part 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  ly 

of  the  benefit.  The  poor  are  not  poor  because 
they  have  no  land.  Land  won't  save  a  man  who 
doesn't  know  how  to  use  it.  There  are  300,000 
Indians  in  this  country,  about  as  many  as  there 
ever  were.  They  used  to  own  all  the  land,  and 
they  still  own  i5o,ooo,ooo  acres  of  it.  It  is  kept 
for  them  by  the  government  of  the  United  States. 
The  Indians  enjoy  the  ownership  of  land  for  the 
benefit  of  all  the  Indians  who  occupy  it  in  common, 
and  who  are  not  even  taxed  on  it.  It  comes  to  5oo 
acres  apiece  for  every  Indian,  every  squaw,  and  every 
papoose  ;  how  much  good  does  it  do  them  ? 

There  is  plenty  of  land  down  South,  good  land, 
to  be  had  at  25  cents  to  $2  an  acre.  I  own  1,000 
acres  of  it  myself.  I  wish  I  didn't.  I  made  a  very 
poor  bargain  when  I  bought  it  for  $2  an  acre.  You 
can  go  and  buy  it.  Why  do  you  work  for  wages 
here  if  you  don't  want  to  ?  Why  do  you  work  more 
than  eight  hours  a  day  if  you  don't  want  to  ?  Why 
do  you  buy  the  cloth  which  you  have  on  your  backs, 
and  pay  me  something  on  every  yard,  if  you  don't 
want  to  ?  Nobody  can  compel  you  to  work  for 
wages.  Nobody  can  compel  you  to  work  more 
than  eight  hours  a  day.  Nobody  can  compel  you 
to  buy  factory  cloth  if  you  don't  choose  to.  I  can't 
compel  you  to  pay  me  a  cent  if  you  don't  want  to. 
Nobody  can  compel  you  to  pay  rent  for  a  workshop 
or  a  dwelling-house  if  you  don't  choose  to.  You 
can  buy  land  even  in  Massachusetts  for  less  than 


1 8  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

nothing  an  acre.  What  I  mean  is  that  you  can  buy 
good  houses  and  barns  and  good  farms  for  less  than 
the  cost  of  the  houses  and  the  barns,  with  the  land 
thrown  in  for  nothing.  Why  don't  you  ?  Because 
you  have  no  capital ;  not  because  I  have  the  capital. 
It  is  not  because  some  other  man  has  saved  a  part 
of  his  work  that  you  have  none  ;  that  isn't  the  rea- 
son. It  is  because  you  have  not  saved  a  part  of 
your  work,  or  else  because  you  could  not  get  as 
good  a  living  on  this  land  as  you  do  now,  if  you 
owned  it.  You  answer  me  that  you  live  in  the  city, 
and  pay  rent,  and  work  for  wages  in  order  to  live 
here,  and  you  work  ten  or  twelve  hours  a  day  for 
wages  here  in  order  to  live  here  at  all.  Very  well. 
Isn't  it  better  to  work  ten  or  even  twelve  hours  a 
day  rather  than  not  to  live  at  all  ?  Of  course  it  is, 
or  else  you'd  quit  if  you  dared  to,  and  go  somewhere 
else.  There  is  plenty  of  room  in  this  world  and  in 
this  country.  There  is  a  great  piece  of  the  South 
that  I  have  spoken  of,  the  middle  mountain  section, 
bigger  than  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  together ;  it 
has  a  better  climate  than  Boston,  better  soil  than 
Massachusetts,  plenty  of  trees,  plenty  of  water,  iron, 
coal,  copper,  lead,  all  sorts  of  things.  If  you  went 
there  you'd  have  to  work  for  yourselves ;  you 
couldn't  help  it ;  you  couldn't  work  for  wages  because 
there  isn't  much  capital,  and  there  would  be  no 
capitalists  to  hire  you.  There  are  2,000,000  or 
3,000,000  people  down  there  who  work  for  them- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  ig 

selves ;  they  spin  their  own  yarn,  they  weave  their 
own  clothes,  they  cut  their  own  wood,  they  make 
their  own  furniture,  they  hoe  their  own  corn,  they 
distil  their  own  whisky  (moonshine  kind),  they 
build  their  own  houses  out  of  logs,  they  are  free  to 
do  just  as  they  like  ;  and  they  work  a  great  deal 
harder  than  you  do  ;  and  they  have  hardly  enough 
to  eat,  drink,  and  wear,  because  there  is  little  or  no 
capital  there  to  help  them. 

Now  let  us  go  back  and  find  out  who  was  the 
first  capitalist  and  what  he  did.  We  know  something 
about  the  men  who  lived  before  there  was  any  writ- 
ten history,  because  they  left  their  tools.  Here  are 
some  of  them.  This  is  a  stone  axe.  It  was  found 
under  thirty  feet  of  gravel  down  in  Delaware.  It 
may  be  12,000  years  old,  it  may  be  100,000  years 
old  ;  it  was  used  by  men  who  lived  in  the  stone  age 
before  the  use  of  metals  was  known  to  any  man. 
They  made  their  axes  of  stone.  Here  are  some 
better  ones.  They  made  their  arrow-heads  of  flint ; 
here  are  some.  They  made  bows  and  strung  them 
with  gut.  They  hunted ;  they  fished  ;  they  ate 
clams  ;  they  have  left  piles  of  clam-shells  all  along 
the  coast  from  Florida  to  Maine,  where  they  came 
down  from  the  woods  in  summ.er  and  had  a  good 
time  ;  and  in  the  big  heaps  of  clam-shells  you  will 
find  lots  of  arrow-heads  and  some  of  these  axes. 
This  axe  is  the  oldest  kind  of  capital.  Now,  can't  you 
imagine  the  man  who  first  found  out  how  to  chip 


20  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

off  a  bit  of  rough  stone  and  make  an  edge  to  it, 
and  who  then  stuck  it  into  the  fork  of  a  spHt  stick 
and  bound  it  with  a  piece  of  gut  ?  Next  he  chipped 
off  a  flint  arrow-head  and  bound  it  to  an  arrow  to 
shoot  with.  The  other  fellows  couldn't  do  it.  He 
began  to  hunt,  and  he  killed  a  great  many  more 
beasts  than  the  other  fellows  ;  he  had  more  meat 
than  he  could  eat ;  he  had  more  skins  than  he 
could  wear.  What  did  he  do  ?  He  swapped  for 
something  else.  But  what  did  the  other  fellows  do  ? 
Didn't  they  swap  with  him  for  his  axes  and  his  arrow- 
heads ?  Why,  then,  they  had  ten  times  as  much  to 
eat  and  ten  times  as  many  skins  to  wear  as  they  had 
before,  didn't  they  ?  Next,  they  must  have  found 
that,  as  long  as  he  could  make  axes  and  arrow-heads 
and  they  couldn't,  he  had  better  do  that  job  and  let 
them  do  the  hunting.  Then  he  became  the  first 
manufacturer.  He  spent  all  his  time  making  axes 
and  arrow-heads.  The  other  fellows  brought  him 
all  the  meat  he  could  eat  and  all  the  skins  he  could 
wear.  They  built  him  a  stone  house,  and  they  did 
all  they  could  so  as  to  save  his  time.  Didn't  they 
make  him  a  capitalist?  Not  because  they  cared 
any  more  about  him  than  they  did  about  the  next 
man,  but  so  that  they  themselves  could  have  more 
axes  and  more  arrow-heads  with  which  to  get  their 
own  living.  He  was  a  capitalist  and  they  were 
hunters.  Were  they  not  all  of  them  better  off  than 
any  of  them  had  ever  been  before  ? 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  21 

Now,  here  is  a  modern  axe,  made  down  in  Doug- 
las or  in  Hartford.  It  cost  fifty  cents.  It  takes  a  big 
capital  to  make  this  kind  of  an  axe.  It  takes  a  first- 
class  man  to  look  after  it.  He  is  worth  a  high  price. 
Who  pays  it  ?  You  pay  it  if  you  use  axes,  because 
by  paying  him  a  high  price  for  the  axe  he  makes  by 
the  use  of  his  capital,  you  have  more  axes  and  better 
axes  than  you  had  before.  You  could  not  make 
them  yourselves  if  you  tried  to.  Then,  where  you 
pay  him  one  cent,  does  he  not  save  you  ten  cents' 
worth  or  more  of  work  ? 

As  I  said  the  other  day  In  a  meeting  of  this  kind, 
if  you  don't  want  to  pay  Mr.  Vanderbilt  for  bring- 
ing your  barrel  of  flour  from  Chicago  to  Boston,  you 
needn't ;  you  can  wheel  it  yourself.  I  had  rather 
pay  Mr.  Vanderbilt  to  carry  my  trunk  or  my  barrel ; 
he  can  do  it  cheaper.  Suppose  the  old  man  did 
make  $100,000,000  out  of  the  job  ;  he  saved  me  a 
dollar  for  every  cent  that  he  made  out  of  me  ;  he 
saved  you  a  dollar  for  every  cent  that  he  got  by 
moving  the  flour  from  the  great  prairies  of  the 
West  down  here  for  you  to  eat.  How  could  you 
do  without  such  men  ?  Wouldn't  it  then  take  you 
and  me  ten  times  as  lonq;  and  ten  times  as  hard  work 
to  get  less  than  we  all  get  now  ? 

There  is  one  kind  of  work  that  I  know  all  about, 
and  that  is  making-  cotton  eoods  in  a  mill.  I  have 
been  working  about  cotton  mills  in  one  way  or  an- 
other ever  since  I  was  a  boy.     When  I  first  went 


22 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


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III 


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THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


23 


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24  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

into  a  store  in  1842  the  men  and  women  who  worked 
in  the  cotton  mills  worked  thirteen  or  fourteen  hours 
a  day,  and  they  could  not  begin  to  make  as  much 
cloth  in  a  day  as  they  do  now,  while  they  only  earned 
half  as  much  wages. 

The  owners  took  a  bigger  slice  out  of  every  yard 
for  their  profit  than  they  do  now  ;  but  the  product 
was  so  small  that  even  the  big  slice  out  of  each  yard 
did  not  make  them  very  rich. 

It  was  just  the  same  in  every  other  kind  of  work 
then  as  it  was  in  the  cotton  mill — longer  hours,  harder 
work,  poorer  pay  ;  too  long,  too  hard  ;  but  it  took 
all  that  time  and  all  that  labor  to  raise  food  enough, 
or  to  make  cloth  enough,  or  to  get  fuel  enough  to  go 
around  ;  where  it  took  thirteen  or  fourteen  hours 
then,  it  now  takes  but  ten  hours.  You  older  men  re- 
member. Am  I  not  giving  you  facts  ?  By-and-by  it 
will  take  less.  I  think  it  very  likely  that  your  child- 
ren will  be  able  to  get  just  as  good  a  living,  and  per- 
haps a  better  one  than  you  do  by  working  eight 
hours  a  day  ;  but  they  won't  get  it  by  acts  of  the  Leg- 
islature. If  you  can  pass  a  law  to  shorten  the  gen- 
eral hours  of  work  (and  it  won't  be  fair  unless  you 
make  it  general),  if  you  bring  every  kind  of  work 
down  to  eight  hours  or  less,  there  will  not  be  houses 
enough  to  give  you  as  good  rooms  as  you  have  now, 
there  won't  be  clothes  enough,  and  there  may  not  be 
food  enough  to  go  around.  You  can't  work  in  that 
way.     You  want  to  shorten  the  hours  of  work  of  the 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


25 


city  laborers,  and  you  vote  that  way  with  the  hope 
that  after  their  work  is  fixed  at  eight  hours  a  day,  you 
will  be  better  able  to  get  the  same  time  for  yourselves. 
Now  if  you  shorten  the  hours  of  work  of  the  city 
laborers  to  eight  hours,  it  will  take  more  men  to  do 
the  work,  won't  it  ?  City  work  is  not  machine  work  ; 
that  is,  the  real  work  is  not.  Some  of  the  political 
work  is  done  by  machinery  that  I  should  like  to 
smash  as  well  as  you.  The  real  work  is  hand  work, 
most  of  it.  Then  if  the  pay  is  kept  at  the  same 
price,  it  will  cost  more.  Then  the  taxes  will  be 
higher.  Who  pays  the  taxes  ?  You  do.  You  can't 
make  the  taxes  stay  where  they  are  put.  You  may 
adopt  Mr.  George's  plan  of  putting  all  the  taxes  on 
land,  but  you  can't  make  them  stay  there.  Nobody 
will  buy,  or  hire,  or  occupy  that  land  to  build  houses 
or  shops  on,  unless  they  can  charge  the  taxes  to 
the  tenant  or  occupant,  or  put  the  taxes  into  the 
price  of  the  goods  that  are  made  in  the  factory  or 
sold  in  the  shop.  If  they  couldn't  collect  the  taxes 
put  upon  them,  then  they  wouldn't  get  any  profit  on 
their  capital  invested  in  the  houses  or  in  the  buildings; 
and,  if  there  is  no  profit  to  be  had  in  building  houses, 
or  shops,  or  works,  or  factories,  who  but  a  fool  would 
build  them  ?     Would  you  ? 

If  you  choose  to  vote  for  men  who  will  shorten 
the  hours  of  city  laborers  to  eight  hours  a  day,  you 
have  a  perfect  right  to  do  so,  because  you  will  pay 
most  of  the  bill.     Working  people  number  ninety  out 


26  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

of  every  hundred  at  least.  I  mean  working  people 
in  the  way  in  which  you  use  the  words — people  who 
work  for  wages  or  small  salaries,  and  are  employed 
by  others  and  not  by  themselves.  In  the  cities,  es- 
pecially, they  number  nine  out  of  every  ten  or  more  ; 
and  the  consumers,  most  of  whom  are  working  peo- 
ple, pay  all  the  taxes  at  the  last  end,  no  matter  where 
they  are  first  put.    That  is  what  I  think  is  the  fact. 

I  have  said  that  I  know  something  about  making 
cotton  goods.  Now  I  am  going  to  show  you  what 
I  know.  I  will  try  to  show  you  what  share  the  mill 
owner  gets  out  of  the  cotton  cloth  ;  what  share  the 
managers  get ;  and  what  share  the  workmen  and 
women  get. 

There  have  been  more  laws  passed  to  regulate  the 
hours  and  conditions  of  work  in  the  cotton  and  wool- 
len mills  of  Massachusetts  than  have  been  passed 
in  connection  with  any  other  set  of  working  people, 
and  more  of  the  same  kind  are  called  for.  If  you  had 
the  power,  you  people  here,  you  would  not  let  the 
owner  of  a  cotton  factory  run  the  machinery  more 
than  eight  hours  a  day  if  you  could  help  it  ;  and  I 
will  show  you  what  would  happen  if  you  had  your 
own  way.  You  would  have  to  wear  your  old  shirts 
a  great  deal  longer  or  go  without  any,  because  at 
least  nine-tenths  of  the  cotton  cloth  made  in  the  mills 
is  worn  by  working  people. 

Before  either  you  or  I  can  judge  whether  the 
present  division  between  labor  and  capital  is  right 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


27 


and  just  or  not,  I  think  we  ought  to  know  just  what 
the  division  is.  Isn't  it  so?  You  think  capital  gets 
too  big  a  share.  I  don't.  I  think  capital  serves 
you  and  helps  you  and  gives  you  a  better  living 
than  you  could  get  in  any  other  way,  and  I  think 
capital  now  serves  you  at  a  low  price.  I  think  you 
cannot  afford  to  employ  capital  at  much  less  price 
than  you  now  pay  for  it,  because  if  you  succeeded, 
capital  would  go  somewhere  else,  and  you  would 
get  left.  Then  what  are  you  going  to  do?  A  hun- 
dred years  ago,  as  nearly  as  I  can  make  it  out,  it 
took  more  time  and  more  hard  work  for  a  family  to 
get  their  clothing  than  it  did  to  get  their  food. 
Even  5o  years  ago  it  took  a  good  deal  more  time  to 
get  clothing  than  it  did  to  get  food.  Now  it  takes 
a  great  deal  less  time  to  earn  money  enough  to  buy 
clothing,  than  it  does  to  buy  food.  Where  a  man 
spends  $ico  a  year  for  meat,  flour,  butter,  cheese, 
potatoes,  etc.,  uncooked,  for  his  own  use,  he  need 
not,  and  does  not,  commonly  spend  more  than  I40 
a  year  for  his  clothing,  ready-made,  including  his 
boots  and  hats. 

Nothing  has  become  so  cheap  as  cotton  cloth. 
There  is  no  art  in  which  the  share  of  labor  and  capi- 
tal can  be  set  off,  one  against  the  other,  so  easily  as 
in  this  art.  The  accounts  have  been  kept  in  such 
a  way  for  5o  years,  as  to  make  it  very  easy  to  show 
how  much  the  labor  costs,  and  how  much  the  capital 
costs  in  a  piece  of  cotton  cloth. 


28  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

Here  Is  a  good,  solid  sheeting,  or  shirting,  which 
I  bought  yesterday  at  one  of  the  big  shops  for  61 
cents  a  yard.  The  average  use  of  cotton  cloth 
would  be  40  yards  apiece  every  year  if  it  was  all 
of  this  kind  ;  but  the  kind  varies.  The  real  aver- 
age is  50  yards,  some  of  it  narrower  and  finer  and 
lighter,  and  some  of  it  coarser.  Now,  cotton  goods 
are  used  more  by  the  million,  by  the  working 
people,  than  they  are  by  rich  people.  You  can  buy 
a  year's  supply,  40  yards  of  this  cloth,  for  $2.5o,  or 
for  two  days'  work  of  a  common  laborer  at  $1.25 
per  day.  How  much  profit  to  the  rich  man  who 
owns  the  mill  do  you  suppose  there  is  to-day  in 
that  cotton  cloth?  It  is  just  one-third  of  a  cent  a 
yard  out  of  the  61  cents  that  you  pay  for  it.  That 
is  the  profit  of  the  mill.  The  rest  all  goes  to  the 
working  people,  in  one  way  or  another.  This  I 
am  going  to  prove  if  you  don't  believe  it ;  and  after 
that,  I  will  prove  to  you  that  working  people  get  the 
biggest  part  of  the  owner's  profit. 

When  you  buy  40  yards  of  cotton  cloth  at  $2. 50, 
you  pay  the  owner  of  the  mill  i5  cents  profit,  but 
you  also  pay  about  i5  cents  more  to  other  people 
for  profit ;  that  is  30  cents  profit  in  all ;  and  you 
pay  $2.20  directly  for  labor. 

In  a  lecture  of  an  hour,  I  cannot  show  you  how 
I  prove  every  part  of  what  I  am  going  to  say  ;  but 
I  have  been  in  the  business  more  than  40  years,  and 
what  I  tell  you  is  either  true  or  it  is  not :  you  can 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  20 

take  it  or  leave  it:    you  can  believe  me  or  not,  just 
as  you  please. 

Now,  look  at  this  chart.  I  call  it  a  labor  spec- 
trum. Do  you  know  what  a  spectrum  is  ?  It  is  not 
a  ghost ;  it  is  a  fact.  Somebody  found  out  a  few 
years  ago  that,  when  you  look  at  the  light  of  the  sun 
through  a  set  of  prisms  or  pieces  of  glass  fixed  in 
a  certain  way,  you  divide  up  the  light  of  the  sun 
into  different  colors  and  separate  lines ;  and  each 
color  or  each  line  proves  that  there  is  some  one 
kind  of  gas  burning  about  the  sun.  Each  line  means 
a  different  gas.  It  is  very  hot  up  there  ;  iron  is 
reduced  to  gas;  soda  is  reduced  to  gas,  etc.,  etc. 
All  these  hot  gases  show  different  lines  and  differ- 
ent colors  in  the  spectrum,  so  that  you  can  really  tell 
what's  going  on  about  the  sun.  This  instrument, 
which  they  call  a  spectroscope,  has  been  applied  to 
a  great  many  uses.  In  making  steel  they  use  it ; 
they  can  tell  when  some  things  that  would  hurt  the 
steel  if  they  were  left  in  it  are  all  burned  out  and 
gone ;  and  that's  one  M^ay  in  which  science  has 
helped  you  to  get  cheap  steel  for  your  tools.  This 
method  is  called  a  spectrum  analysis. 

Now,  I  have  taken  this  piece  of  cloth  and  have 
made  a  spectrum  analysis  of  it.  I  am  going  to  show 
you  how  much  of  it  is  cotton,  how  much  of  it  is 
labor  in  the  mill,  how  much  of  it  is  the  salary  of  the 
treasurer  and  of  the  agent ;  how  much  of  it  is  pro- 
fit ;  who  gets   it ;  what   it  costs   you   to   employ  a 


30  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

capitalist  to  make  your  cotton  cloth  for  you  instead 
of  making  it  yourself  if  you  knew  how.  You  must 
have  cotton  and  woollen  cloth ;  you  must  either 
make  the  cloth  yourself,  or  hire  somebody  else  to  do 
it.  You  buy  it  because  you  can  get  40  yards  for 
two  days'  work  of  a  common  laborer.  How  much 
work  do  you  suppose  it  would  take  to  make  that  40 
yards  yourselves  by  hand  cards  and  spinning-wheels 
and  hand  looms,  as  they  do  down  South  and  up  in 
Canada  to-day,  because  they  don't  know  any  bet- 
ter? 

Five  men  and  women — two  carding,  two  spinning, 
and  one  weaving — can  in  one  day  make  eight  yards 
of  cloth  a  great  deal  coarser  than  this  :  this  is  equal 
to  one  person's  work  for  five  days ;  forty  yards 
would  take  five  times  as  much,  or  twenty-five  days  ; 
and  when  you  had  the  cloth  you  wouldn't  wear  it 
any  more  than  you  would  wear  a  crash  towel  if  you 
could  get  anything  else,  because  it  would  be  so 
coarse  and  so  rough  ;  therefore  you  pay  a  capitalist 
fifteen  cents  profit  on  forty  yards  of  cloth,  in  order 
to  save  yourselves  twenty-three  days*  work  (mighty 
hard  work  at  that)  in  getting  good,  smooth,  soft 
factory  cloth,  instead  of  coarse,  wiry,  rough  home- 
spun. Who  gets  the  best  of  that  bargain  ?  If  your 
work  is  now  worth  $i.5o  a  day,  and  you  save 
twenty-three  days,  I  make  it  out  that  the  capitalist 
who  owns  the  mill  saves  you  $34.50,  and  charges 
you  fifteen  cents  for  doing  it.     But  perhaps  you  say 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  3 1 

thnt  even  in  this  case  the  rich  man  who  owns  the 
mill  gets  too  much,  and  the  carder,  the  spinner,  the 
weaver,  and  the  other  hands  who  do  the  work  in  the 
mill  get  too  little.  Well,  we'll  see  about  that.  We 
want  the  facts  first ;  then  we'll  know  who  gets  too 
much  and  who  gets  too  little,  if  the  divide  isn't  a  fair 
one. 

Now,  look  again  at  this  chart.  You  may  sup- 
pose that  I  and  my  brothers  own  a  cotton  mill  which 
would  cost  to-day  $1,000,000  to  build.  We  don't, 
but  I  wish  we  did.  I  hope  my  boys  will.  I  am 
bringing  some  of  them  up  to  this  trade,  and  you  can 
bring  your  boys  up  to  this  trade  if  you  want  to  ; 
perhaps  your  boys  will  get  ahead  of  my  boys.  There 
might  be  three  of  us.  I  know  just  such  mills  where 
two  or  three  men  do  own  a  mill  worth  $1,000,000. 
Now  let  us  see  what  they  do  with  it.  They  would 
employ  960  hands  in  the  mill,  or  a  little  over  $1,000 
capital  to  each  hand  ;  they  would  buy  10,000  or 
12,000  bales  of  cotton  every  year,  and  they  would 
make  that  cotton  into  i7,5oo,ooo  yards  of  cotton 
cloth  just  like  this.  This  would  give  437,600  men, 
women,  and  children  forty  yards  apiece  per  year.  At 
six  and  one-quarter  cents  per  yard,  this  comes  to 
#2.50  cost  to  each  person,  or  $1,100,000  in  all. 

Now  look  at  this  top  square,  No.  i,  in  light  blue 
color. 

[The  so-called  spectrum  analysis  of  a  piece  of 
cotton  cloth  was  shown  on  a  large  chart,  on  which 


32  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

each  part  of  the  cost  was  colored  separately,  so  that 
the  exact  proportion  was  made  very  clear. 

In  order  to  give  the  same  facts  so  as  to  be  made 
clear  to  the  eye,  the  accompanying  table  has  been 
prepared  in  the  speaker's  usual  method  of  lines  of 
different  length.] 

This  square  (No.  i)  represents  the  cost  of  the  cotton 
in  the  cloth — §5 75,000.  It  would  take  about  thirty 
planters,  400  small  farmers,  and  1,500  field  hands  to 
raise  this  cotton  ;  also  about  180  men  employed  in 
the  presses,  baling,  packing,  shipping,  marking,  in- 
cluding a  lot  of  men  on  the  railroads  who  get  the 
cotton  from  the  farm  or  the  plantation  down  South 
up  to  the  mill  in  the  North. 

The  next  square  in  red.  No.  2,  is  the  proportion 
of  labor  in  the  mill — qSo  pickers,  carders,  spinners 
and  weavers,  overseers  and  second  hands  ;  I  don't 
count  in  the  agent,  nor  the  paymaster,  nor  the 
clerks  ;  the  960  men,  women,  and  children  now  earn, 
on  the  average,  $300  apiece  each  year  in  ten  hours' 
work  a  day — $285, 000.  Forty  years  ago  they 
worked  thirteerf  hours  a  day,  or  even  more,  and 
earned  $175  apiece.  Just  think  of  it.  A  few  days 
ago  Mr.  H.  N.  Slater,  the  son  of  Samuel  Slater,  the 
man  who  first  brought  the  art  of  cotton  spinning  to 
this  country  in  his  head,  because  no  plans  on  paper 
could  be  safely  taken  away  from  England,  was  in 
my  office.  He  is  over  eighty,  but  his  mind  is  as 
clear  and  as  bright  as  ever,  and  he  told  me  how  he 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


33 


worked  in  those  first  mills  not  only  thirteen,  but 
fourteen,  and  in  the  long  days  fifteen  hours  a  day. 

How  is  it  now  ?  Every  operative  can  buy  more 
clothing,  more  food  and  better  shelter,  with  each 
dollar  of  the  $300  now  earned  in  ten  hours'  work, 
than  they  could  with  each  dollar  of  the  $175,  forty 
years  ago,  earned  in  thirteen  or  fourteen  hours' 
work  ;  so  you  see  that  even  if  they  are  not  very 
well  off  now,  they  are  yet  a  great  deal  better  off  and 
have  easier  work  and  shorter  time  than  they  did  then. 

Next  you  see  a  narrow  line,  brown,  No.  3.  This 
represents  the  proportion  of  the  cost  of  the  fuel,  the 
oil,  and  the  starch,  and  the  materials  used  to  keep 
the  machines  in  good  order  ;  and  it  represents  the 
work  of  about  100  men  outside  of  the  mill — $55,ooo. 

The  next  line  in  yellow.  No.  4,  represents  the 
depreciation  of  the  mill.  You  may  try  to  keep  a 
mill  in  good  repair  as  well  as  you  can,  and  charge 
all  the  cost  of  the  repairs  to  the  cost  of  the  cloth, 
and  still  the  mill  will  grow  no  better  every  day, 
because  men  keep  inventing  better  machinery,  that 
does  more  work  at  less  cost  and  higher  wages  ;  and 
unless  the  owner  keeps  up  and  pays  for  the  depreci- 
ation, he  will  fail  sooner  or  later.  I  have  put  in  four 
per  cent,  for  depreciation,  and  that  means  the  work 
of  eighty  men  making  new  machinery  all  the  time 
for  $40,000. 

The  next  black  line,  No.  5,  stands  for  the  taxes, 

$15,000  a  year. 
3 


34  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

The  next  little  narrow  line,  in  pink,  No.  6,  stands 
for  the  insurance  and  the  general  expenses,  $10,000. 
This  is  where  I  come  in.  You  help  to  pay  my  sal- 
ary, because  my  salary  goes  into  the  cost  of  every 
yard  of  cotton  cloth  you  have  on  your  backs.  It 
is  all  on  this  pink  line,  but  you  can't  see  it. 

The  next  line,  in  green.  No.  7,  is  what  is  paid  to 
the  railroads  who  take  the  goods  to  market,  about 
$10,000. 

The  next  line  in  red.  No.  8,  is  what  is  paid  to  the 
treasurer,  the  agent,  the  superintendent,  the  pay- 
master and  all  the  clerks.  I  have  put  it  in  red  be- 
cause it  represents  labor  as  much  as  the  work  in  the 
mill  :  mighty  hard  work,  too.  I  know  what  it  is, 
because  I  have  been  there.  It  comes  to  about 
$20,000  on  such  a  mill. 

The  next  line,  in  violet,  No.  9,  is  the  cost  of  sell- 
ing the  goods  at  wholesale,  the  commission  paid  to 
the  merchant,  the  salaries  of  his  salesmen,  the  wages 
of  his  porters,  his  draymen,  and  all  the  men  who 
work  in  the  shop — about  $30,000  in  all. 

And  this  last  line,  in  dark  blue,  No.  10,  is  six  per 
cent,  profit,  or  $60,000.  If  you  buy  forty  yards 
apiece  every  year  of  this  cloth,  at  the  present  price 
of  61^  cents,  and  if  I  owned  this  mill  to-day,  all  that  I 
could  make  out  of  you  would  be  six  per  cent,  profit 
and  four  per  cent,  depreciation,  with  cotton  at  ten 
cents  a  pound.  Each  of  you  would  therefore  pay  me 
fifteen  cents  a  year.     Now,  if  you  can  do  better  why 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


35 


should  you  buy  my  cloth  ?  Why  don't  you  make  it  ? 
If  I  owned  that  mill  should  I  be  a  cheap  man  for  you 
to  employ,  or  not  ?  That's  what  I  want  to  know.  I 
have  given  you  the  number  of  men,  women,  and 
children  who  would  be  required  to  raise  the  cotton, 
to  send  it  to  the  mill,  to  make  it  into  cloth  enough 
to  give  over  400,000  other  men  and  women  forty 
yards  a  year  each.  I  have  shown  you  what  they 
earn  and  what  you  pay,  by  the  colors  on  this  chart. 
Here  are  the  proportions  shown  by  lines  of  different 
lengths  in  my  usual  way. 

But  that  is  not  the  end  of  it.  You  will  say  that 
the  cotton  planter  makes  a  profit.  So  he  does,  a 
little.  You  will  say  that  the  railroads  make  a  profit. 
So  they  do,  mighty  little.  You  will  say  that  the  men 
who  make  the  starch,  the  oil,  and  the  fuel  make  a 
profit.  So  they  do.  But  I  can  show  you  just  about 
how  much  each  of  them  makes  when  trade  is  as  gfood 
as  it  is  now. 

If  you  put  in  the  profit  on  the  cotton,  on  the 
presses,  on  the  railroads,  on  the  starch  and  the  oil 
and  everything  else  all  together,  it  comes  to  about 
$63,000  ;  add  the  profit  of  the  mill,  $60,000  ;  then 
put  in  the  treasurer's  salary,  the  agent's  salary,  and 
what  the  two  merchants  o-et  out  of  their  work  after 
paying  all  their  clerks  and  salesmen — call  that  all 
profit — $22,000  more  ;  and  then  the  whole  profit  on 
the  whole  business  comes  to  1145,000.  All  the  rest 
is  labor  and  taxes.      Here  it  is,  right  here  ;  this  big 


36 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


red  square  shows  what  the  working  people  get,  3,400 
of  them,  on  all  the  work,  $940,000.  The  blue  square 
is  all  the  profit,  $145,000  ;  and  the  little  black  line  is 
the  tax,  $15,000;  and  that  uses  up  $1,100,000. 

Take  it  by  the  yard.  The  whole  of  the  labor  in  a 
yard  of  this  cloth  is  5  -^-^^  cents.  The  whole  of  the 
profit  is  y^yiy-  of  a  cent.  The  whole  of  the  tax  is  y|-y- 
of  a  cent.  You  each  use  forty  yards  apiece  a  year, 
you  workmen  ;  you  pay  to  other  workmen  every 
year  for  your  forty  yards,  $2.13  ;  you  pay  to  the 
planters,  to  the  railroad  men,  to  the  mill-owners,  to 
the  merchant,  to  the  agent  and  the  treasurer  thirty- 
four  cents  a  year  ;  and  you  pay  to  the  tax  of  the 
town  in  which  the  mill  is  situated  three  cents  a  year. 
Can  you  do  any  better  ?  "  Yes,"  you  say,  "  we  want 
to  own  the  mill  itself."  Well,  why  don't  you  own  it? 
You  can  save  money — some  of  you  do  ;  you  can  buy 
shares  in  just  such  a  mill  if  you  want  to  ;  or  you  can 
get  up  a  cooperative  mill  if  you  want  to  ;  but  I  should 
advise  you  not  to  do  it  ;  it  is  risky  business  ;  I  think 
the  Lowell  factory  operatives  who  have  put  their 
money  into  the  old  Lowell  Savings-Bank  for  the 
last  thirty  years  are  better  off  to-day  than  if  their 
money  had  been  put  into  almost  any  of  the  Lowell 
cotton  mills. 

But  we  haven't  come  to  the  end  of  it  yet.  There 
is  a  little  more  labor  when  the  profits,  $145,000,  are 
divided.  Now  look  at  this  little  square,  which  is  just 
the  same  size  as  the  other  square  or  profits  up  above. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


37 


It  Is  divided  up.  Tlie  three  mill-owners  get  the  big- 
gest slice,  $60,000,  or  $20,000  each,  three  blue 
squares.  The  treasurer,  agent,  and  two  merchants 
get  the  next  division,  $22,000.  The  profit  on  the 
coal,  oil,  starch,  railroads,  and  the  planter's  profit  is 
divided  up  into  these  little  squares,  fifty,  sixty,  or 
seventy  of  them,  each  getting  a  small  slice. 

But  now  what  do  these  people  do  with  all  their 
profit  ?  They  can't  eat  it,  or  drink  it,  or  wear  it, 
not  the  whole  of  it.  All  any  one  of  them  gets  in 
this  life  is  a  house  or  a  room  to  live  in,  some  food  to 
eat,  some  clothes  to  wear,  some  fuel  to  burn,  and 
something  to  drink.  I  should  like  to  see  any  one  of 
you  get  more  than  that.  That  is  all  that  I  can  get 
out  of  it ;  and  what  I  eat  and  drink  and  wear  is  what 
I  cost,  isn't  it  ?  I  may  spend  a  great  deal  more  than 
what  I  cost ;  but  what  I  spend  supports  some  one 
else,  does  it  not  ?  What  I  cost  myself  is  what  I 
consume. 

Now  let's  see  what  becomes  of  the  profits.  Here 
are  the  three  mill-owners,  of  whom  I  wish  I  was  one. 
They  have  $60,000  a  year  among  them,  $20,000 
apiece.  Suppose  they  waste  a  little  over  one-third 
of  it,  $22,000,  on  fast  horses,  champagne,  fancy  farms, 
and  that  sort  of  thing.  Some  of  them  do.  This 
litde  black  square  represents  the  waste  ;  and  if  three 
of  us  owned  this  mill  and  wasted  this  amount  of 
money  on  ourselves,  that  is  what  we  should  cost, 
and  you  would  pay  it  if  you  could  afford  to.     If  you 


804 


2ti 


38 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


thought  you  couldn't,  you  wouldn't.  We  couldn't 
make  you  buy  our  cloth.  All  the  other  men,  all  of 
them  who  earn  each  a  share  of  this  profit,  would 
support  their  families,  and  they  would  spend  about 
as  much  as  this  pink  square,  say  $68,000.  If  we 
assume  that  this  is  paid  to  servants,  tradesmen, 
teachers,  musicians,  gardeners,  farmers  and  the  like, 
at  about  $400  each,  it  would  be  divided  among  1 70 
persons,  partly  or  wholly  supporting  them. 

We  cannot  assume  that  even  capitalists,  as  a  rule, 
save  and  add  to  their  capital  on  the  whole  more 
than  they  spend  for  the  support  of  their  families.  Of 
course  there  are  a  very  few  rich  men  who  save  more 
than  they  spend  ;  but  their  savings  are  a  very  small 
part  of  the  whole  savings  of  the  people.  We  may 
assume  that  the  owners  of  the  cotton  mill,  and  the 
others  who  share  the  other  profits,  save  in  each  year 
about  five  per  cent,  of  the  value  of  the  product  to 
add  to  the  capital  in  their  works  or  elsewhere.  This 
saving,  five  per  cent.,  or  $5 5, 000,  is  represented  by 
the  square  in  dark  red  ;  this  being  expended  for 
building  a  new  mill  or  new  works  of  some  kind, 
would  be  paid  out  for  the  service  of  about  100  car- 
penters, masons  and  machinists,  each  of  whom  would 
earn  $55o  in  a  year  in  doing  this  work.  Is  that  paid 
for  labor  or  not  ? 

Lastly,  workmen  who  are  prudent,  judicious,  and 
cautious  save  somethinof.  We  found  that  there  were 
3,400  working   people    engaged  in  the   product  of 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  30 

cotton  cloth  worth  $1,100,000.  Suppose  each  one 
saved  only  five  cents  a  day  for  each  working  day,  or 
the  price  of  a  glass  of  beer,  $i5  a  year;  then  the 
aggregate  of  the  saving  of  all  engaged  in  the  work 
would  come  to  $49,65o.  This,  added  to  the  sum 
saved  by  capitalists,  makes  $i04,65o  added  to  the 
capital  of  the  country,  out  of  the  $1,100,000  product. 
It  is  represented  by  the  green  square.  It  is  a  litde 
less  than  ten  per  cent,  of  the  product  ;  and  this  result 
agrees  with  all  the  observations  that  I  have  been 
able  to  make  in  regard  to  every  art,  namely,  that 
not  over  ten  per  cent,  of  the  entire  product  of  the 
United  States  ever  has  been,  or  ever  can  be,  saved 
and  set  aside,  to  be  added  to  the  capital  of  the 
countr)^  either  by  the  workmen,  the  merchant,  the 
owner  or  the  capitalist,  or  all  combined. 

In  this  last  analysis  you  now  have  the  final  division. 
The  little  black  square  at  the  left.  No.  i,  represents 
in  its  proportion  to  the  rest  of  the  line  the  cost  of 
the  three  rich  men  who  own  this  mill,  even  if  they 
waste  $22,000  a  year  in  absolutely  wasteful  expen- 
diture. I  use  long  words  for  them.  It  is  as  much 
as  any  three  men  owning  such  a  mill  and  running  it 
themselves  would  be  likely  to  waste.  In  the  second 
part  of  the  line  colored  in  red  you  get  the  proportion 
of  the  product  which  is  consumed  by  those  who  do 
the  work,  or  the  cost  of  what  their  product  is  when 
exchanged  for  beef,  pork,  mutton,  coal,  clothing, 
boots,  hats,  dwellings,  and  other  necessaries  of  life. 


40 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


Their  cost   is  $958,65o.      The  taxes  take  |i5,ooo 
from  workmen  and  capitaHsts. 

In  the  third  division,  in  dark  green,  you  have 
what  was  saved  by  the  capitalists,  $55,ooo;  and  in 
the  fourth  division  of  light  green  you  have  what  was 
saved  by  the  workmen  at  five  cents  a  day,  $49,65o. 
Or  put  this  division  into  so  much  a  yard,  and  you 
find  that  in  each  yard  of  cotton  cloth  the  capitalist 
has  wasted  one-eighth  of  a  cent  a  yard,  the  laborer 
has  consumed  five  and  one-half  cents,  and  the  capi- 
talists and  the  laborers  together  have  saved  five- 
eighths  of  a  cent  a  yard,  and  that  is  the  end  of  it. 

Now,  what  are  you  going  to  do  about  it  ?  If  you 
still  say  that  the  profit  of  $145,000,  of  which  $60,000 
goes  to  the  owners  of  the  mill,  is  too  much,  and  if 
you  could  in  any  way  reach  and  divide  it  among 
those  who  do  the  work  in  the  mill,  then  what  would 
become  of  the  270  people  among  whom  these  profits 
were  divided  by  those  who  spend  the  profits  in  sup- 
porting their  own  families  or  in  building  a  new  mill  ? 

There  were  qSo  operatives  in  the  mill.  Suppose 
you  take  all  the  profit  and  divide  it  among  these 
mill  hands,  then  you  say  they  would  spend  it  in  sup- 
porting the  270  who  now  work  for  the  owners  of  all 
the  capital.  But  you  know  very  well  that  what  mill 
hands  spend  would  go  in  a  very  different  direction. 
It  might  be  just  as  useful,  it  might  be  all  right.  All 
I  have  to  say  is  this  :  When  you  take  away  the 
profits  from  the  owners  and  managers  of  the  mills, 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


41 


then  all  the  makers  of  fine  cabinet  work,  of  pianos, 
of  fine  paper  hangings,  all  the  carpenters  and  masons 
who  build  the  better  kind  of  houses,  and  all  the 
skilled  mechanics,  of  whom  there  are  probably  a 
good  many  here,  who  now  work  for  the  owners  of 
the  mills,  and  all  the  teachers  and  musicians  who  are 
employed  by  them,  would  be  obliged  to  find  some 
other  kind  of  work.  They  must  either  go  upon  the 
farms  to  make  more  food,  or  go  into  the  cotton  mills 
to  make  more  cloth.  There  is  food  enouofh  and 
cloth  enough  already  ;  what  should  we  do  with  what 
these  men  made?  In  other  words,  you  can't  have 
more  than  the  cat  and  her  skin.  Labor  now  crets 
the  cat,  and  the  owner  gets  the  skin.  That's  about 
the  end  of  it. 

You  must  either  make  more  cloth  with  the  same 
machinery  and  the  same  number  of  workmen,  and 
sell  it  at  the  same  price  and  at  no  lower  price,  or  else 
you  can't  get  out  of  the  cotton  cloth  any  more  than 
you  have  put  into  it.  I  have  shown  you  exactly  how 
it  is  divided  now.      Can  you  better  it  .'* 

You  may  not  like  the  statement.  You  may  feel 
like  using  some  swear  words  about  me.  Well, 
that  won't  hurt  me,  and  if  it  does  you  any  good  I 
hope  you  will  swear  ;  but  you  don't  damn  the  facts  ; 
if  they  are  the  facts  it  won't  alter  them  if  you  do.  If 
they  are  not  the  facts,  if  I  have  not  told  you  the 
truth,  then  go  ahead  and  find  out  the  truth  in  your 
own  way.     That  is  what  you  can  do  in  these  or- 


42  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

ganizations,  clubs,  Knights  of  Labor,  eight-hour  asso- 
ciations ;  and  the  more  you  study  the  more  you  will 
find  out  that  the  capitalist  is  your  friend  and  not  your 
enemy.  If  you  treat  him  right  he  will  treat  you 
right, 

I  have  taken  cotton  cloth  as  an  example,  and  it  is 
the  worst  example  that  I  could  take  to  prove  the 
service  of  capital.  Why  is  it  the  worst  example  ? 
Because  it  takes  $i,ooo  to  set  one  man,  woman,  or 
child  at  work  in  a  cotton  factory.  In  a  woollen  fac- 
tory it  takes  only  $5oo.  In  a  boot  factory,  only 
$2  5o  ;  and  in  order  that  the  woollen  factory  may 
earn  4  per  cent,  depreciation  and  6  per  cent,  profit 
on  capita],  the  proportion  of  product  set  aside  would 
be  only  one-half  what  I  have  set  aside  from  the 
cotton  factory  ;  the  line  would  be  only  one-half  as 
wide  as  the  profit  line  on  this  chart.  In  a  boot  fac- 
tory it  would  be  only  a  quarter.  "  But,"  you  say, 
"  the  owners  of  the  woollen  factory,  boot  factory, 
and  machine-shop  get  more  profit  than  the  owner 
of  a  cotton  mill."  No,  they  don't  in  the  long  run. 
If  there  is  any  kind  of  safe  business  that  will  pay  4 
per  cent,  depreciation  and  6  per  cent,  net  profit  on 
the  capital,  safe  and  sure,  capital  will  rush  into  that 
business,  whatever  it  is. 

Now  suppose  the  profit  on  cotton  goods  went  up 
one-half  cent  a  yard  :  suppose  you  had  to  pay  7 
cents  instead  of  ^\,  or  a  quarter  of  a  cent  interest 
on  money  borrowed,  and  half  a  cent  extra  profit. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


43 


What  would  happen  then  ?  The  working  capital — 
the  money  borrowed  by  cotton  mills  is  usually  bor- 
rowed of  savings-banks — and  the  one-fourth  of  a 
cent  interest  would  go  to  the  savings-bank  ;  the 
half-cent  extra  profit  would  go  to  the  owners  of 
the  mill.  Do  you  suppose  they  could  keep  along  at 
that  rate  ?  The  mill  would  then  pay  about  i5  per 
cent,  a  year  instead  of  6  per  cent,  to  its  owners.  I 
have  seen  such  times,  and  I  have  taken  such  divi- 
dends myself,  but  they  don't  last.  The  moment 
such  a  big  profit  is  to  be  had  in  any  kind  of  work, 
in  come  some  new  fellows,  who  build  a  new  mill 
right  alongside  of  you,  very  likely  a  better  one. 
They  then  pay  better  wages  ;  they  hire  away  your 
best  men  and  women,  and  very  soon  they  bring  the 
profit  down  as  low  as  it  was  before,  and  sometimes 
down  to  nothing  at  all  for  a  long  period.  This  is 
just  what  has  happened,  in  the  last  three  years,  to 
ever  so  many  mills  that  I  know  all  about,  in  some  of 
which  I  owned  some  stock. 

Now,  fellow-workmen,  it  has  taken  a  good  deal  of 
work  for  me  to  be  able  to  tell  you  all  this.  I  have 
been  at  it  40  years,  and  I  have  worked  1 3  hours  a 
day  when  I  was  a  youngster.  In  old  times,  when  I 
wanted  to  save  an  extra  quarter  of  a  dollar  to  go  to 
the  theatre,  I  made  my  dinner  of  bread  and  milk, 
and  I  saved  my  money  in  that  way.  You  can  do 
the  same  thing,  only  you  needn't  spend  it  to  go  to 
the  theatre  unless  you  choose  to,  though  I  think  it  is 


44 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


a  pretty  good  plan  to  do  that  now  and  then.  All 
work  and  no  play  doesn't  pay  for  anybody. 

The  way  to  shorten  your  time  and  work  less  hours 
is  to  do  more  while  you  do  work  ;  and  I  don't  know 
of  any  other  way.  I  never  could  find  one.  Do  the 
best  you  know  how.  Work  by  the  piece  ;  work  by 
the  hour.  If  you  have  any  snap  in  you  in  these 
times  you  can  save  something.  You  say  you  can't  } 
Well,  I  say  that  the  man  who  says  so  right  here  at 
this  time  is  bound  to  prove  it.  Perhaps  you  haven't 
said  it  right  out,  but  you  said  it  to  yourself  just  now  ; 
"I  can't  save  anything  out  of  what  I  get."  I  ask 
you  why  you  can't,  if  you  are  a  good  workman  ? 

I  say  you  can.  I  ask  you  how  much  you  spent 
to-day  that  you  needn't  spend  on  yourself?  But 
we  won't  go  into  that — it's  too  big  a  subject.  I  could 
show  you  how  to  save  five  cents  a  day  easily  enough 
in  the  average  cost  of  your  food,  so  as  to  have  good 
food  which  tastes  better  than  what  you  get  now, 
which  will  serve  you  better  ;  but  I  can't  do  it  here 
within  this  hour.*  Now,  I  am  going  to  hit  you  hard. 
I  am  going  to  tell  you  which  man  will  come  out  ahead 
and  which  man  won't  among  those  of  you  who  are 
here  at  this  time  right  before  me.     You  know  when 

*  Since  my  address  was  made  the  Treasurer  of  the  old  Lowell  Savings- 
Bank  has  sent  me  the  following  statement  of  an  actual  deposit  in  the  bank 
to  which  nothing  has  been  added  except  the  accrued  dividends,  and  from 
which  nothing  has  been  withdrawn.  i8S6,  March,  deposit,  $200.  JSS7,  May, 
dividends  to  date,  $676.50.     Total,  §876.50. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


45 


the  British  troops  occupied  Boston  in  the  Revolution- 
ary War  they  nicknamed  the  people  •'  Yankees; "  they 
meant  it  for  ridicule,  for  "  sass  ;  "  but  I  don't  know 
any  real  Yankee  who  isn't  proud  of  being  a  Yankee  ; 
and  I  think  the  Yankees  came  out  ahead  ;  they 
didn't  choose  to  be  ruled  by  John  Bull ;  they  chose 
to  manage  their  own  affairs,  and  they  do  ;  they  have 
done  pretty  well  on  that  line.  They  sent  the  British 
troops  out  of  Boston  Harbor  because  they  wanted  to 
control  their  own  work  and  their  own  time  ;  they 
didn't  want  any  one  else  to  say  that  they  should  do 
this  and  that  they  shouldn't  do  that.  Well,  now, 
some  of  you  are  trying  to  do  the  same  thing  that  the 
British  troops  tried  to  do  ;  you  are  trying  to  rule  the 
workman  ;  you  are  trying  to  tell  men  how  they 
shall  work,  when  they  shall  work,  where  they  shall 
work,  and  how  long  they  shall  work  ;  you  call  a  man 
a  scab  who  won't  submit.  Is  that  fair  play?  Now, 
you  won't  like  it  when  I  tell  you  right  here  that  the 
"  scab  "  is  the  man  who  will  come  out  ahead,  and  you 
will  get  left.  But  don't  mistake  me.  I  wholly  ap- 
prove of  the  organization  of  labor.  I  don't  care  what 
you  call  it,  whether  trades-unions,  Knights  of  Labor, 
or  by  any  other  name  ;  all  that  I  claim  is  that  you 
mind  your  own  business.  What  is  needed  now  is  a 
club  of  "  scabs  ;  "  that  is,  a  liberty  club,  a  mind-)our 
own-business  club.  If  you  have  Knights  of  Labor, 
why  not  have  Squires  of  Work  ?  I  believe  in  a  squire 
more  than  I  do  in  a  knight.    The  squires  have  been 


46 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


licking  the  knights  for  the  last  three  hundred  years, 
getting  on  top,  and  by  and  by  they  will  bury  them. 
We  have  done  with  kings,  with  princes,  with  dukes 
and  other  privileged  classes  ;  now  what  business  have 
the  knights  of  to-day  to  take  up  the  privileges  which 
the  squires  took  away  from  the  old  knights  long 
ago  ?  What  were  these  privileges  that  the  princes,  the 
dukes,  and  the  knights  used  to  claim  in  old  times  ? 
Just  what  the  Knights  of  Labor  claim  now,  the  right 
to  tell  you  or  me  what  we  shall  do  with  our  time  and 
our  brains,  and  how  we  shall  use  our  hands.  That 
won't  work.  The  squires  won't  have  it.  There  are 
more  squires  than  there  are  knights,  only  they  don't 
know  it  yet.  Then  I  say  let  the  squires  organize, 
support  each  other,  and  help  each  other  to  find  out 
what  their  work  is  really  worth.  They  don't  want 
any  master  workman  ;  they  don't  want  any  masters 
of  any  kind  to  order  them  around.  They  want  cor- 
porals and  sergeants,  men  of  their  own  kind  ;  non- 
commissioned officers  to  keep  them  in  line  and  to 
keep  them  all  up  to  the  best  mark.  When  you  or- 
ganize such  a  club  as  this  every  member  will  get 
hiorher  wa^res  because  he  will  be  the  best  man  of  his 
kind  ;  each  one  will  be  a  man  who  knows  how  to 
make  his  own  bar^j^ains  and  manao-e  his  own  affairs. 
There  will  always  be  work  for  him  at  the  highest 
price,  because  he  will  be  the  man  who  will  make 
goods  at  the  highest  wages  and  at  the  lowest  cost. 
That's  the  kind  of  man  that  every  employer  wants  to 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


4? 


find,  I  don't  care  whether  the  times  are  hard  or 
easy,  good  or  bad,  that  kind  of  man  always  gets 
work,  and  always  gets  the  best  pay  that  the  price  of 
the  goods  which  he  makes  will  permit  the  employer 
to  pay. 

It  is  a  great  blunder  to  say  that  while  the  rich  are 
growing  richer,  the  poor  are  growing  poorer  ;  it  is 
only  the  poor  who  can't  work  well,  or  who  won't  work 
well,  who  grow  poor  while  the  rich  are  growing  rich 
in  this  country.  The  best  times  for  the  manufacturer 
are  the  times  when  he  makes  the  most  money,  and 
they  are  always  when  the  wages  are  highest  and  not 
when  they  are  the  lowest,  because  wage-earners  are 
their  principal  and  most  important  customers. 

Therefore,  I  tell  you,  organize,  organize,  organize, 
but  organize  the  squires  of  work  ;  call  in  all  the 
"  scabs "  to  join,  and  don't  refuse  any  man  who 
works  for  his  living  either  with  his  hands  or  his  head, 
with  his  own  capital,  or  his  own  tools,  or  his  own 
brains,  if  he  is  an  honest  and  a  true  man. 

There  are  two  things  very  much  needed  in  these 
days ;  first,  for  rich  men  to  find  out  how  poor  men 
live  ;  second,  for  poor  men  to  know  how  rich  men 
work.  This  is  coming  ;  there  has  been  a  great 
change  since  I  was  young ;  most  of  the  boys  with 
whom  I  went  to  rather  a  poor  school  were  sons  of 
rich  men.  I  tried  to  make  a  list  of  them  one  day 
not  long  ago,  but  I  stopped  :  it  was  too  sad  ;  half  of 
them  had  died  as  fools  die,  of  rum  or  worse.     Half 


48  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

my  friends  in  later  years  have  been  men  who  began 
at  the  lowest  round  of  the  ladder.  The  most  useful 
and  one  of  the  best  friends  I  ever  had  be""an  as  a 
mule  boy  in  a  cotton  mill.  My  best  friend  now 
was  for  many  years  a  common  sailor. 

There  are  not  as  many  drones  and  dudes  now  as 
there  used  to  be.  Let  them  pass,  they  don't  cost 
much,  and  they  are  not  of  much  account  anyway.  I 
can  name  to  you  scores  of  young  men  of  fortune  who 
are  now  doing  the  kind  of  work  that  does  not  pay 
in  money  but  does  pay  in  human  welfare.  You  can- 
not spare  them. 

When  we  who  are  on  the  down-grade  of  life  look 
back  over  a  single  generation,  only  thirty-five  years, 
what  do  we  see  ? 

Has  not  this  country  become  one  great  neighbor- 
hood in  which  all  men  serve  each  other  ?  Who 
made  it  so  ?  Was  it  not  the  inventors,  men  of 
science,  who  worked  with  their  heads  and  not  so 
much  with  their  hands  ?  Did  they  not  give  the  men 
of  capital  the  power  to  build  the  railroads  and  to 
bring  the  food  of  the  far  West  to  the  door  of  your 
dwelling,  at  a  profit  on  each  barrel  of  flour  moved 
i,ooo  miles  so  small  that  it  is  now  less  than  what  the 
empty  barrel  is  worth  to  put  our  own  apples  in  after 
you  have  eaten  the  flour  ?  Are  not  the  hours  of 
work  shorter?  Is  not  the  work  of  life  easier?  Are 
not  all  the  conditions  of  life  better  now  than  they 
were  when  many  of  you  and  when  I  myself  began 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


49 


to  get  our  own  living  by  the  use  of  our  own  hands 
and  our  own  brains  ?  I  could  prove  all  this,  but 
there  is  not  time  to-night.  If  you  want  me  to  speak 
again,  I  will  do  so. 

If  we  have  done  so  much  within  the  span  of 
one  man's  working  life,  what  will  be  done  in  the 
working  lives  of  our  boys  who  are  just  becoming 
men  ?  If  they  work  as  well  as  we  have,  if  you  leave 
them  free  to  use  their  own  heads  and  their  own 
hands,  if  you  do  not  lead  them  to  hope  for  rest  and 
leisure  unless  they  have  earned  it  or  saved  it  for 
themselves,  then  your  dream  may  be  realized  :  eight 
hours  may  be  enough,  and  the  time  saved  and  well 
earned  will  be  well  spent.  I  hope  for  that  time. 
I  can  see  the  promise  of  it  underneath  the  figures 
which  I  have  put  before  you.  I  can  read  it  between 
the  black  lines  which  I  have  drawn  to  prove  my 
case  ;  but  I  am  called  a  visionary  and  an  optimist. 
I  am  glad  I  am. 

Therefore,  I  say  to  you,  I  take  no  stock  in  those 
who  will  not  trust  you,  and  who  speak  of  your  unions 
and  your  clubs  as  if  you  had  no  right  to  join  them. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  I  say  to  you,  do  not  give 
away  your  own  case.  You  have  no  more  right  to 
compel  men  to  join  your  clubs  and  obey  your  rules 
than  I  have  to  compel  you  to  work  for  me  if  you  do 
not  choose  to  do  so. 

If  there  is  one  thing  meaner  than  a  rich  man  who 
does   not  admit  that  wealth  has  duties  as  well  as 

4 


50 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


rights,  it  is  a  workman  who  tries  to  prevent  his 
nei(Thbor  from  makingf  his  own  barorains  in  his  own 
wa)-,  and  who,  when  he  fails,  as  he  always  will  fail, 
next  tries  to  make  him  contemptible  by  nicknaming 
him  a  "scab." 

Now  I  will  stop.  It  is  your  turn  now.  Who 
speaks  first  ? 

But,  fellow-workmen,  before  you  begin  to  fire 
back  at  me,  let  me  say  a  word  or  two  personally.  I 
have  told  you  that  you  and  I  must  talk  this  thing 
out.  What  I  mean  is  that  every  poor  man  ought  to 
talk  this  thing  out  with  every  rich  man  or  with  every 
man  who  is  better  off  than  he  is  himself,  in  order  to 
get  at  the  true  question  of  rights.  If  I  come  here 
to  blarney  you  with  soft  words  about  the  rights  of 
labor,  if  I  try  to  catch  your  votes  by  any  of  the  com- 
mon stuff  that  is  put  into  political  speeches  and  polit- 
ical platforms,  you  would  scout  me  and  would  never 
want  to  hear  me  again.  I  despise  this  talk  about  the 
rights  of  labor.  The  poor  man  has  no  more  rights 
than  the  rich  man.  What  you  want  to  think  about  are 
the  rights  of  man,  whether  he  be  rich  or  poor.  Now 
you  must  not  think  I  have  no  sympathy  with  the  poor. 
I  don't  know  what  I  should  do  myself  if  I  were  to 
become  poor  again.  I  was  poor  once.  I  don't  in- 
tend to  keep  my  children  from  being  poor  by  piling 
up  my  money  for  them.  Every  man  should  try  to 
keep  his  children  from  being  poor  by  putting  skill 
into  their  heads  and  hands  rather  than  money  into 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


51 


their  pockets.  I  tell  you  here  and  now  that  by  the 
acts  of  the  Legislature  which  you  have  tried  for,  and 
some  of  which  have  been  passed,  and  by  way  of  by- 
laws of  your  Knights  of  Labor,  your  clubs  and  your 
associations,  which  you  have  tried  to  force  people  to 
adopt,  you  are  driving  capital  out  of  the  State  of 
Massachusetts.  Up  to  this  time  the  true  men  of 
this  country,  the  free  men  of  this  country,  the  scabs 
of  this  country,  have  managed  their  own  affairs  fairly 
well,  without  much  regard  to  your  meddlesome  acts  ; 
the  result  of  that  has  been  that  the  men  of  special 
skill,  who  are  at  the  head  of  their  trades,  are  100  per 
cent,  better  off  to-day  than  they  were  20  years  ago 
and  more.  That  is,  they  can  buy  twice  as  much 
food,  fuel,  clothing  and  as  good  a  shelter  to-day  for  a 
year's  wages,  as  they  could  buy  20  years  ago  with 
what  they  then  earned.  The  average  carpenter, 
mason,  painter  or  other  mechanic,  who  minds  his 
own  business,  and  keeps  the  control  of  his  own 
time,  can  buy  nearly  twice  as  much,  but  not  quite. 

The  average  factory  operative  can  buy  two-thirds 
more  than  he  or  she  could  buy  20  years  ago  with  a 
year's  wages  ;  and  the  common  laborer  can  buy  50 
per  cent.  more.  But  this  will  not  go  on  if  you  don't 
stop.  There  is  no  time  to  prove  to  you  what  I  say 
to-night  :  but  if  you  will  go  up  to  the  State  House 
and  ask  the  State  Treasurer,  you  can  get  the  facts, 
and  you  can  find  out  for  yourselves  that  you  are 
driving  capital  out  of  this  State  into  other  States, 


52  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

where  men  are  left  more  free  than  they  now  are  here 
to  manage  their  own  affairs. 

Now,  if  you  think  I  am  cold  and  hard  and  without 
sympathy,  I  tell  you  it  is  better  than  any  sympathy 
or  any  "  soft  sawder  "  or  any  "taffy,"  to  tell  you  the 
truth.  If  you  don't  believe  that  what  I  tell  you  is 
true,  get  at  the  facts  yourselves  ;  and  when  you 
prove  me  to  be  wrong  I  will  admit  it. 

I  have  said  to  my  friends  that  I  should  have  fair 
play  and  a  fair  hearing  here  to-night.  I  have.  I 
will  not  thank  you  for  what  was  due  to  yourselves 
while  you  listened  patiently  to  hard  words  ;  but  I  do 
thank  you  for  your  courtesy  to  me. 


For  the  purpose  of  this  publication  the  reply  by  Mr.  Cham- 
berlin  and  the  rejoinder  by  Mr.  Atkinson  have  been  carefully 
revised  by  the  authors,  who,  while  adhering  to  the  substance 
and  the  form  of  the  original  addresses,  have  corrected  them  so  as 
to  make  the  points  and  conclusions  as  clear  as  possible. 


REPLY  TO   EDWARD  ATKINSON, 

BY 

E.     M.    CHAMBERLIN. 

I  HAVE  no  doubt  we  should  most  of  us  be  orlad  if 
we  could  keep  Sunday  entirely  as  a  day  of  rest,  de- 
voting another  day  of  the  week,  Monday  perhaps,  to 
recreation  and  amusement  and  to  the  consideration 
of  those  public  questions  upon  which  from  time  to 
time  the  people  are  called  upon  to  give  an  opinion. 

It  unfortunately  happens,  however,  that  nine-tenths 
of  that  people — I  speak  of  working-men  and  women, 
their  families  and  those  depending  upon  them — are 
not  masters  of  themselves  for  a  large  portion  of  the 
time  from  Monday  morning  to  Saturday  night,  and 
are  compelled  during  that  time  to  strain  every  energy, 
to  devote  every  faculty,  and  to  give  the  greater  part 
of  their  thought  to  devising  ways  and  means  to  earn 
a  living.  Some  are  in  good  places  and  there  is  no 
prospect  of  immediate  discharge  ;  but  put  them  all 
together  and  the  income  of  the  v/orking  classes  is  too 
little  for  their  necessities.  They  have  not  money 
enough  to  meet  their  needs  from  one  year's  end  to 
another,  as  all  statistics  show. 

Few  indeed  are  the  households  of  the  workers 


56  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

that  are  not  agitated  by  the  fundamental  inquiry, 
What  shall  we  do  to  live  ?  All  are  more  or  less 
scrimping,  turning,  fasting,  planning,  and  devising  ;  all 
with  tense  muscles  and  knitted  brows  holding  the  door 
to  keep  out  the  gaunt  wolf  that  is  ready  to  spring  into 
every  house.  When  we  count  our  distance  from 
want  by  days  we  cannot,  in  any  great  numbers, 
even  on  Sunday,  find  room  in  our  thoughts  for  any- 
thing else  than  bread  and  meat.  And  when  a  man 
on  a  week  day,  after  an  early  rising  and  a  hasty 
breakfast,  goes  a  greater  or  less  distance  to  his 
work,  and  takes  his  place  at  a  bench  another  has  pro- 
vided for  him,  all  day  long,  over  his  shoulder,  more 
or  less  distinct  he  sees  a  spectre.  As  he  grows  older 
the  spectre  stands  out  more  plainly,  till  finally  he  is  in 
his  clutches,  a  spectre  no  more,  but  a  terrible  reality. 
At  seven  in  the  evening  the  worker  eats  his  supper. 
I  thank  God  that  with  many  for  the  future  it  will  be 
at  six,  and  if  the  Governor  wants  a  reason  for 
Thanksgiving  day  this  year,  he  can  find  no  better  one 
than  this.  It  is  a  cause  of  jubilation  ;  and  the  sturdy 
men  who,  aofainst  such  odds  as  were  brouQ^ht  to 
bear  against  them,  have  at  length  conquered  the 
right  to  eat  their  supper  at  six  o'clock  may  well  make 
merry.  Well,  after  a  long  day's  work,  tired  out, 
they  can  hardly  help  retiring  early. 

My  friend  says  the  men  must  save,  must  econo- 
mize, must  eat  beef  at  five  cents  a  pound  instead  of 
twenty.     Starve    our  stomachs   to    save    our  food ! 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


57 


Better  and  more  nutritious  will  the  food  be  ?  Is  this 
recommended  because  it  is  better,  or  because  it  is 
cheaper?  If  because  it  is  better,  the  working  class 
need  not  be  appealed  to  ;  everybody  will  soon  find 
that  out.  If  because  it  is  cheaper,  we  answer, 
nothine  is  too  Qrood  for  us.  We  know  that  the  more 
expensive  we  are  the  higher  will  our  wages  be,  for 
that  is  determined  by  the  cost  of  living  ;  an  iron  law 
Ricardo  calls  it.  If  all  laborers  could  save  in  cook- 
ing, the  employers  would  profit  by  the  saving — not 
the  workmen. 

Chinamen  are  cheap  because  they  do  not  cost 
much,  do  not  consume  much.  We  are  dearer  be- 
cause we  must  have  nicer  things.  If  a  thing  is  good 
in  itself  it  will  do  for  all,  not  particularly  for  working- 
men. 

Political  economy  is  one  branch  of  human  knowl- 
edge, cookery  another.  We  want  the  best  of  each, 
but  not  both  together.  If  a  man  will  save,  will  lay 
by  something,  he  in  time  may  work  out  of  his  class. 
Let  him  work  out  of  his  class  if  he  will,  that  way  or 
any  other  ;  when  he  does  we  have  no  concern  for  him. 
What  becomes  of  the  others  ?  We  do  not  care  for  the 
few  who  scramble  over  the  backs  of  their  comrades, 
and  we  are  not  gfoinsf  to  tell  them  how  to  do  it.  Our 
concern  is  for  those  who  are  being  scrambled  over. 
We  believe  that  all  may  be  saved. 

Let  us  follow  the  idea  to  its  logical  conclusion  and 
accept  all  the  results.     If  it  is  a  praiseworthy  thing 


58  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

in  one  to  step  from  the  dependent  class,  it  is  a  praise- 
worthy thing  in  all.  But  when  all  step  out  there  is 
no  such  class.  We  are  stepping-.  As  John  Swinton 
said  the  other  night,  we  are  taking  the  first  step,  the 
"goose  step,"  and  we  are  going  to  step  together. 
No  classes !  Let  us  settle  that  point  right  here.  It 
seems  to  me  that  there  are  two  very  well-defined 
classes  at  least ;  those  who  pay  wages,  and  those  who 
receive  them.  Over  there  is  capital ;  here  is  labor. 
Life  is  a  contest  between  these  two  forces  ;  it  is  no 
use  to  prevaricate  or  to  deny  this. 

They  have  interests  in  diametrical  opposition  to 
each  other.  The  lines  that  divide  the  two  are  as 
well  defined  as  those  which  divide  the  earth  from  the 
sky  or  the  land  from  the  ocean.  Labor  gets  wages, 
capital  gets  profit.  The  lower  the  wages,  the  larger 
the  profits  (speaking  generally).  The  less  the  profits 
the  higher  the  wages,  the  world  over.  The  more 
capital  can  make  on  your  labor,  the  richer  will  it  grow ; 
the  less  it  can  make  on  your  labor,  tlie  richer  will 
you  be.  The  issue  is  distinct.  The  two  parties — 
classes — in  the  contest  stand  out  clear  and  bold 
ao"ainst  the  backsfround  of  events.  There  is  no 
chance  for  confusion  ;  there  is  no  intermingling  of 
the  elements.     Life  is  a  death-struggle. 

We  all  catch  at  straws.  The  more  straws  the  capi- 
talist can  scratch  together  the  longer  he  will  keep  up. 
The  fewer  the  laborer  can  get  hold  of,  the  sooner  he 
will  go  down.     One  keeps  his  head  above  the  waves 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


59 


at  sixty  ;  the  other  sinks  at  forty.     Can  one  wonder 
at  this  scramble  for  the  Margin  of  Profits  ? 

The  exigencies,  then,  of  our  week-day  Hfe  oblige 
us  to  devote  a  day  that  we  would  like  for  absolute 
rest  to  study  as  we  are  doing  this  evening,  or  in 
some  other  way.  What  we  can  save  of  this  day  from 
the  money-making  pursuits  of  a  sordid  class,  is  due 
to  the  efforts  of  the  workingmen.  It  is  they  who  in 
.New  York,  Massachusetts,  and  in  the  West  have 
called  and  are  calling  on  the  public,  the  legislatures, 
and  the  courts  to  stop  the  inroads  of  capital  upon  the 
domain  of  labor's  rightful  leisure,  a  leisure  upheld 
by  every  consideration  of  humanity  and  justice. 

It  is  these  Knights  of  Labor  that  our  friend  so  rid- 
icules, and  in  Boston,  Barber  Knights,  that  make  it 
a  little  easier  for  us  to  come  out  and  hear  Mr.  At- 
kinson on  a  Sunday  evening.  What  hope  have  we 
from  his  class,  in  this  ?  They,  the  special  guardians 
of  the  day,  the  members  of  those  religious  organ- 
izations handed  down  from  the  Puritan  fathers,  who 
were  such  rigid  observers  of  Sunday,  as  a  day  of 
rest,  that  no  travelling  or  cooking  were  allowed  on 
that  day,  are  the  first  to  defend  the  employment  of 
steam  and  horse- car  conductors  for  seven  days  of 
the  week,  on  the  plea  that  otherwise  they  could  not 
attend  divine  worship  on  Sunday,  while  for  half  the 
day  they  close  their  churches  to  enjoy  their  fine 
dinners.  They  have  a  lesson  to  learn  from  those 
who  never  see  inside  their  beautiful  edifices. 


6o  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

In  the  narrow  circle  in  which  Mr.  Atkinson  con- 
fines himself  for  the  most  part,  he  is  master  of 
many  figures.  He  no  doubt  collects  these  and  ar- 
rancres  them  with  the  Qrreatest  care.  In  no  other 
industry  are  they  obtainable  in  a  like  degree  of 
completeness.  The  criticism  that  might  be  made 
generally  to  specialists  of  his  school  is,  that  in  de- 
fence of  their  order  they  draw  their  illustrations 
from  a  small  corner  of  the  landscape  that  best  ac- 
cords with  the  picture  they  would  like  to  see.  Such 
figures  tend  to  confuse  the  mind,  in  the  examination 
of  which  more  important  points  than  that  illustrated 
are  lost  sight  of. 

The  lawyers,  parsons,  and  political  economists 
constitute  themselves  the  nursemaids  of  labor,  and 
receive  their  fees  for  watching  us.  They  remind 
me  of  a  picture  I  once  saw  in  Punch,  where  the 
female  attendant  of  two  little  girls,  one  on  either 
side,  crowds  their  hats  over  their  eyes  with,  "do 
keep  them  in  place,  children,"  while  she  kisses  the 
policeman. 

We  will  "  do  justly,"  according  to  our  lights,  but 
prefer  some  other  than  the  nursemaid's  definition  of 
what  justice  is.  We  will  "  love  mercy "  though 
others  be  pitiless  to  us.  As  to  "  walking  humbly," 
well,  we  never  will  walk  like  Uriah  Heep. 

Another  objection  to  treating  the  subject  as  if  it 
were  a  sum  in  arithmetic — as,  for  instance,  if  a  cotton 
mill  has  a  hundred  dollars  to  divide  in  wasfes  this 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  6 1 

year  among  a  hundred  children,  therefore,  each 
child  must  receive  a  dollar  and  no  more  next  year — 
is  the  fact,  that  this  proposition  holds  good  only  for 
the  moment.  Before  the  multiplication  or  division 
card  that  the  economist  has  thrown  at  the  child's 
head  can  reach  him  or  her,  conditions  have  changed. 
When  Mr.  Atkinson  tells  us  of  profits  and  wages, 
he  tells  us  what  profits  were  divided  and  what  wages 
were  paid.  Let  that  go.  We  do  not  ask  for  any 
back  pay.  What  is  the  object  of  these  post-iaortcrn 
examinations  ?  We  deal  with  the  livinof.  The 
mere  fact  that  a  certain  amount  of  wages  was  paid 
is  no  proof  that  the  same  amount  will  be  paid  again. 
On  the  contrary,  if  there  is  any  such  thing  as  prog- 
ress, it  is  proof  that  the  same  amount  will  not  be 
paid  again.  What  is  progress?  Why!  More 
wages. 

Production,  consumption,  and  wages  are  not  fixed 
quantities  to  be  worked  out  any  time  by  the  rule  of 
three.  We  are  not  so  many  bricks  long  and  so 
many  high.  We  are  growing  every  minute,  and  it 
takes  more  wages,  more  product  to  feed  us.  As 
one  needs  more,  one  makes  more.  The  supply  is  only 
limited  by  our  wants.  There  is  no  limit  to  produc- 
tion to  which  wages  must  correspond.  If  wages  in- 
crease, production  must  also  increase.  Wages  are 
not  restricted  by  production,  so  much  as  production 
is  restricted  by  wages. 

Increase  wages  first,  and  production  will  follow. 


62  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

The  measure  of  wages  is  the  consumption  of  the 
producer.  Mr.  Atkinson  says  rightly,  that  a  man 
costs  what  he  consumes.  Production  is  always 
ahead  of  consumption.  We  need  have  no  fear  on 
that  head.  The  main  thing  is  to  make  men  con- 
sume more.  We  can  do  that  only  by  creating 
within  them  new  wants.  It  cannot  be  that  if  you 
cut  down  the  profits  by  enlarging  the  wages  of  the 
laborers  you  will  throw  the  makers  of  fine  cabinet 
work,  the  musicians  and  artists  of  various  kinds,  out 
of  employment  because  capitalists  cannot  afford  to 
employ  them.  All  have  like  tastes  and  desires,  or 
the  germs  thereof  are  within  us  to  be  cultivated. 
These  things,  like  every  thing  else,  will  become  more 
abundant,  cheaper,  more  easily  produced  when  pro- 
duced for  all  instead  of  for  the  few  who  now  enjoy 
them.  Poverty  is  more  expensive  than  wealth. 
"  Take  care  of  the  rich,  and  the  rich  will  take  care 
of  the  poor,"  is  a  sentiment  that  has  lost  its  force. 
We  do  not  believe  that  it  is  necessary  to  sustain  a 
class  in  order  that  the  cabinet-makers,  etc.,  may  be 
taken  care  of.  Attend  the  twenty-four  concerts  of 
the  Symphony  Orchestra  that  are  given  during  each 
winter.  From  the  first  one  to  the  last  one  you  see 
the  same  people  occupying  the  same  seats.  The 
enjoyment  of  the  most  delightful  music  in  the  world, 
restricted  to  three  thousand  people  out  of  a  popula- 
tion of  more  than  half  a  million  in  and  around  Bos- 
ton, by  the  narrow  margin  of  profits !     Dr.  Tourgee 


THE   "MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  63 

should  have  a  Symphony  Orchestra  at  the  South 
End,  Professor  Elson  one  at  the  Highlands,  and  I 
am  not  sure  that  there  is  not  a  chance  for  another 
down  town,  and  that  Dr.  Julius  Eichberg,  a  com- 
poser and  director  of  the  highest  ability,  could  not 
sustain  one  at  the  Conservatory  of  which  he  is  the 
head,  if  wages  were  a  little  higher.  If  the  exten- 
sion of  these  institutions  depended  upon  the  size  of 
the  profits,  there  should  have  been  more  of  them, 
proportionately,  when  profits  were  larger.  They 
grow  as  profits  decrease,  however.  If  more  wages 
are  paid,  those  who  receive  wages  have  more  to 
spend  for  furniture,  music,  pictures,  and  so  on  ;  and 
more  furniture,  music,  and  pictures  will  be  produced. 
Produced  in  greater  quantity,  they  will  be  produced 
with  less  effort.  A  o-reater  demand  for  artists  will 
fill  our  present  and  create  new  schools  and  conserva- 
tories. Is  it  not  absolutely  true  that  the  more  wages 
have  increased  the  greater  has  been  the  production  ? 
If  your  cotton  mill  divides  six  per  cent,  and  makes 
a  hundred  thousand  dollars'  worth  of  goods  in  a 
year,  let  it  divide  four  per  cent,  increasing  the  wages 
by  the  other  two  per  cent.,  and  instead  of  a  hundred 
thousand  dollars  in  product  you  will  get  more  than 
one  hundred  and  two  thousand  dollars  in  product. 
This  is  history.  No  Joshua  of  the  cotton  interest 
can  make  the  sun  and  moon  of  wages  and  produc- 
tion stand  still.  The  speaker  has  told  you  that  pro- 
fits tend  to  a  minimum.     They  have  always  been  so 


64  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

tendiriQf.  Labor  has  been  stretchinc;-  out  its  hand 
for  this  margin  ever  since  the  first  slave-drivers 
stole  it.  It  is  the  sole  creation  of  labor,  and  by  the 
first  principles  of  justice,  it  belongs  to  the  laborers. 
It  is  no  justification  of  the  taking  to  say  that  it  is 
small.  I  am  talkincj  now  of  the  takinfr,  not  of  the 
recovery  of  what  has  been  taken.  Let  that  go.  It 
is  said  the  service  rendered  warrants  the  taking  ; 
who  shall  be  the  judge,  the  taker  or  the  takce  ? 

There  is  not  an  item  on  that  chart  from  which 
some  profit  or  other  has  not  been  appropriated  by 
capital.  The  profit  stated  there  does  not  give  a 
fair  idea  of  this  appropriation,  either  as  to  the 
amount,  or  the  moral  effect  on  the  community  of 
such  appropriation.  If  one  wrongfully  takes  from 
another  he  must  fight  to  keep  it.  He  must  hire 
others  to  help  him  to  keep  it.  He  will  make  laws 
that  all  shall  help  him  keep  it.  He  becomes  an  op- 
pressor. 

If  an  analysis  is  made  of  the  profits  of  a  cotton 
mill,  a  complete  analysis  should  be  made  of  every 
article  used  in  that  mill ;  and  not  of  the  small  amount 
used  in  that  mill  alone,  but  in  every  other  mill  and 
in  every  connected  industry  in  the  country. 

What  the  profit  is  on  a  thousand  dollars  invested 
in  a  cotton  mill  is  of  little  use  to  know.  I  could  not 
take  the  total  wealth,  land,  stationary  and  floating 
capital,  and,  applying  the  per  cent,  of  the  cotton  mill 
profits,  find  the  total  profit  on  capital.     Nor,  if  the 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  65 

Stationary  capital  alone  be  taken,  or  the  amount  of 
currency  in  circulation  be  taken,  would  the  result  be 
any  more  satisfactory.  As  Colonel  Wright,  Chief  of 
the  National  and  State  Boards  of  Statistics,  said  in 
conversation  with  me,  this  very  week,  "  We  have  no 
statistics  that  can  show  us  that."  The  estimate 
of  the  amount  of  profit  on  capital  in  the  aggregate  is 
no  more  than  a  guess.  It  is  several  hundred  per 
cent,  in  some  cases,  and  only  a  fraction  per  cent,  in 
others.  Sometimes  capital  does  not  make  anything, 
fails,  and  goes  out  of  business.  By  what  criterion 
shall  we  know  who  guesses  nearest  to  the  truth  ?  It 
is  not  very  important  to  know  the  amount  of  proht 
on  capital  unless  we  know  how  many  capitalists 
there  are.  The  ratio  of  the  profits  on  capital  is  de- 
creasing, but  the  aggregate  profits  are  increasing. 

The  capitalist  class  is  relatively  diminishing  in 
numbers,  while  the  laboring  class  is  relatively  increas- 
ing in  numbers,  just  as  fast  as  the  larger  industries 
are  swallowino-  the  smaller  ones.  The  aesreofate 
profits  and  the  amount  apportioned  to  each  member 
of  the  capitalist  class  becomes  greater  and  greater. 
The  wage  class  has  more  than  it  did  have,  but  less 
proportionately  on  account  of  the  increasing  discrep- 
ancy in  the  number  of  members  in  the  two  classes. 

The  saving  on  production  is  almost  entirely  in  the 
hands  of,  is  the  property  of  the  capitalist  class,  and 
each  year  something  is  added  to  its  enormous  re- 
sources.    In   1880  the  total   net   production    of  all 


(^  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

manufacturing  industries  in  the  United  States,  less 
five  per  cent,  for  wear  and  tear,  was  $1,834,000,000, 
the  wages  paid  to  2,739,000  employes  was  5i|-  per 
'  cent,  of  that  sum,  and  the  balance,  481  per  cent.,  what 
capital  added  to  its  capital  and  to  waste.  If  there 
had  been  as  many  capitalists  as  laborers,  the  money 
would  have  been  about  equally  divided.  How  many 
capitalists  were  there  ?  That  is  an  essential  item  to 
consider.  Statistics  do  not  show.  For  a  partial  illus- 
tration of  how  labor-created  values  are  divided,  we 
may  take  a  cotton  mill  or  anything  else  ;  but  as  evi- 
dence in  the  o^eneral  issue  the  fio-ures  are  worthless. 

Turn  to  the  chart ;  labor  is  in  red.*  It  is  the  heart's 
blood.  Without  it  the  human  and  the  social  frame 
is  a  ghastly  corpse.  It  represents  those  who  were  at 
work  in  that  cotton  mill.  Let  us  have  some  great  black 
squares  for  those  who  were  not  at  work  anywhere. 

Colonel  Wright  reported  last  year  that  a  million 
persons  were  permanently  out  of  work.  A  vast 
number  more  were  temporarily  out  of  work  from  one 
month  to  six  months  from  various  causes.  Thirty 
thousand  stockmen  in  Chicago  were  locked  out  by 
Armour  and  the  rest  till  they  submitted  to  be  worked 
ten  hours  instead  of  the  eight  they  had  been  work- 
ing. For  six  months  and  more  the  beef  and  pork 
men  of  that  chief  headquarters  of  the  beef  and  pork 
supply  worked  eight  hours,  and  we  had  enough  to 

*  The  chart  referred  to  is  that  used  when  the  lecture  was  delivered.     See 
frontispiece. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


67 


eat.  Armour's  profits  were  less,  though.  The  car- 
penters of  the  same  city  and  of  many  other  places, 
including  Boston,  out.  Thousands  of  men  on  Gould's 
Southwest  system.  Eighty  thousand  freight  hand- 
lers in  New  York.  Now,  the  shoemakers  of  central 
Massachusetts,  and  the  silversmiths  of  Pennsylvania, 
New  York,  Connecticut,  and  Rhode  Island,  in  both 
cases  because  their  employers  will  have  no  more 
Knights  of  Labor.  A  free  country  this.  There  can- 
not be  universal  activity  so  long  as  production  so 
far  outstrips  consumption.  Industry  must  be  inter- 
mittent, and  partial  paralysis  ensue. 

As  Mr.  Atkinson  says,  in  the  country  farms  are 
untilled,  and  their  empty  buildings  left  to  decay.  In 
the  cities  and  towns  thousands  of  honest,  industrious 
men  are  out  of  work.  The  proof  of  this  is  that  when 
we  have  a  large  strike,  like  the  recent  one  in  New 
York,  or  that  of  the  Boston  horse-car  employes, 
unemployed  men  are  found  in  sufficient  numbers  to 
take  the  places  of  the  strikers.  Of  course,  in  trades 
requiring  greater  skill  it  is  more  difficult  to  fill  the 
places  of  those  who  cease  work  ;  but  even  then  very 
often  the  employers  manage  to  pick  up  hands  that 
will  answer  for  a  little  while  and  until  the  men  are 
obliged  to  surrender.  If  chere  were  not  a  dearth  of 
employment  compared  with  the  number  that  wished 
to  be  employed,  how  could  the  scabs  come  out 
ahead,  as  Mr.  Atkinson  insists  ?  There  would  be  no 
scabs  to  fill  the  places  of  the  strikers.     The  supplant- 


68  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

ing-  of  union  men  by  non-union  men  presupposes 
that  the  latter  are  in  sufficient  numbers  to  supplant 
the  former. 

In  Pennsylvania  and  Ohio  the  mines  and  furnaces 
are  at  one  moment  in  full  operation,  and  the  next 
idle.  In  the  great  cities  thousands  upon  thousands 
of  workers,  suffering,  starving  men,  women,  and 
children,  huddling  together  in  misery.  Look  at  all 
your  large  cities  and  mark  the  cordon  of  jails,  re- 
formatories, poor-houses,  hospitals,  and  prisons  that 
are  stretched  about  them.  Notice  how  the  islands 
of  Boston  harbor,  that  should  be  places  of  recreation, 
are  being  covered  with  institutions  devoted  to  pun- 
ishment. Take  New  York  harbor ;  Blackwell's 
Island,  almost  two  miles  long,  covered  from  end  to 
end  with  prisons,  alms-houses,  and  hospitals  ;  Ward's, 
Randall's,  and  other  islands  devoted  to  the  same  or 
similar  uses  ;  six  hundred  acres  of  beautiful  pleasure 
grounds  along  the  city's  front,  devoted  to  such 
purposes,  are  a  perpetual  witness  to  our  shameful 
robbery  of  the  poor.  Says  a  physician  connected 
with  one  of  these  institutions,  in  writing  upon  the 
subject,  "  When  capital  and  commerce  grow  humane, 
and  become  as  considerate  of  human  hearts  and 
lives  as  they  are  of  machinery,  then  and  not  sooner 
will  this  diabolic  waste  be  checked  and  stayed." 

In  view  of  all  the  appalling  facts  connected  with 
our  present  system  of  industry,  we  can  have  little 
patience  with  figures.     They  will  not  cure  our  ills. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  69 

They  will  not  find  us  bread  and  butter,  yet  one 
knows  that  there  is  plenty  of  bread  and  butter  to  be 
had. 

Now,  then,  commence  at  the  beginning  of  this 
profit  question.  Your  factory  is  built  upon  the  land. 
How  much  profit  do  the  land  owners  in  the  country 
eet  out  of  the  land  ?  Since  the  time  of  Columbus 
the  land  has,  by  reason  of  human  toil,  been  growing 
more  and  more  valuable,  till  the  present  owners  of 
it  derive  from  it  in  the  shape  of  rent,  a  profit  on 
centuries  of  labor  that  all  comes  out  of  present  pro- 
duction. How  much  is  taken  from  labor  in  this  way 
who  can  tell  ?  We  know  generally  something  of 
the  social  condition  of  the  land  owners  and  the  land- 
less, but  what  the  former  class,  actually  in  money, 
scoops  from  the  products  of  the  latter,  it  would  be 
hard  to  get  at.  The  profits  from  the  unearned  in- 
crease in  the  value  of  land  are  simply  colossal.  Can 
they  not  be  diminished  and  something  added  to  the 
waires  of  labor  ?  What  service  do  the  landlords 
render  to  the  community  that  entitles  them  to 
any  such  pay  as  they  take  ?  They  do  nothing. 
They  grow  rich  in  their  sleep  on  illegitimate  profits. 
To  start  out  with,  there  is  a  pretty  large  moral 
cloud  if  not  a  leofal  cloud  on  their  title.  As  Herbert 
Spencer  says,  "  It  can  never  be  pretended  that  the 
existing  titles  to  such  property  are  legitimate.  Vio- 
lence, fraud,  the  prerogative  of  force,  the  claim  of 
superior  cunning,  these  are  the    sources    to    which 


70  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

these  titles  may  be  traced.  The  original  deeds 
were  written  with  the  sword  rather  than  with  the 
pen  ;  not  lawyers  but  soldiers  were  the  conveyancers  ; 
blows  were  coin  and  the  seals  were  blood," 

Mr.  Atkinson  says  we  cannot  help  that ;  if  we  put 
more  taxes  on  the  land  owner  he  will  tuck  it  on  to 
the  tenant,  so  that  the  producer  will  finally  pay. 
He  is  wrono-.  If  I  own  a  lot  of  ground  and  sfive, 
sell,  or  have  stolen  from  me  half  the  rent,  I  cannot 
charge  that  half  to  my  tenant  with  any  expectation 
that  he  will  pay.  The  price  of  rent  is  not  so  much 
within  the  control  of  land  owners  as  it  is  within  the 
control  of  the  community.  It  depends  primarily  on 
how  much  of  the  general  production  the  community 
will  be  satisfied  to  live  upon.  We  are  not  Fellahs, 
at  any  rate. 

All  the  surplus  of  production  that  man  has  saved 
these  many  years  is  attached  to  the  land.  In  an  in- 
creased taxation  on  land  that  surplus  will  be  taken  be- 
fore you  can  touch  the  daily  product  of  labor,  nearly 
the  whole  of  which  is  required  to  support  the  people 
according  to  the  present  standard  of  living.  The 
landed  class  may  be  strong,  but  they  cannot  push  us 
back  into  another  century. 

Well,  we  have  our  land,  and  the  factory  has  to  be 
built.  On  every  pile  that  is  driven,  and  on  the 
driving  of  the  piles,  on  every  stick  of  timber  and 
every  board,  on  every  stone  and  every  brick  in  that 
structure,  and  on  the  labor  of  the  men  who  nail  the 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


71 


boards  and  lay  the  bricks,  a  profit  is  taken  by  capital. 
On  the  men,  twenty-five  per  cent,  perhaps.  On 
the  materials,  much  less.  So  with  all  the  iron  and 
machines  used  in  that  factory,  everything  is  subject 
to  a  profit.  And  then  when  you  commence  work, 
your  coal  is  subject  to  a  great  profit.  It  don't 
make  so  large  an  item  here,  but  you  find  it  every- 
where. 

We  all  pay  to  the  grinding  coal  companies  some- 
thing of  the  immense  profits  they  swindle  from  the 
public,  and  from  the  ill-paid  miners  and  handlers, 
the  immediate  victims  of  their  tyranny.  You  trans- 
port your  coal,  cotton,  and  materials.  See  the  pro- 
fits the  railroad  kings  have  amassed.  The  speaker 
says,  well,  if  they  can  bring  a  barrel  of  flour  from  the 
West  at  less  than  the  cost  of  the  barrel,  they  are 
entitled  to  the  profits  for  the  service  they  have  done. 
They  are  nothing  but  the  accidental  owners  of  the 
railroad.  It  was  labor  that  built  the  road,  made 
and  laid  the  rails,  constructed  engines,  cars,  and 
stations  ;  that  operates  the  road  when  constructed, 
and  which  has  it  in  its  power  by  simply  ceasing 
work  to  prevent  you  from  getting  }our  barrel  of 
flour  from  the  West  at  any  price. 

The  men  you  have  to  thank  are  the  Knights  of 
Labor,  not  the  knights  of  the  watering-pot. 

The  inventors  and  the  men  of  science  contributed 
something — much — to, the  effectiveness  of  labor,  but 
by  what  rule  of  justice  do  the  money  lords  appro- 


72  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

priate  that  ?  The  Fultons  and  Stevensons  worked 
for  mankind. 

Why  stop  at  the  profit  on  this  cotton  cloth  when 
it  leaves  the  mill  ? 

The  stores,  the  manufacturers  of  garments,  all 
have  their  profits  to  take. 

If  the  profit  be  really  small,  it  is  no  palliation  of 
the  tyranny  and  oppression  to  which  the  system 
under  which  these  profits  are  taken  gives  rise.  In 
the  history  of  labor,  the  misery  mark  runs  parallel 
with  the  per  cent,  profit  mark. 

Take  this  same  cotton  industry.  From  its  history 
we  learn  at  least  these  two  things  : 

1.  That  the  smaller  the  profit  the  better  off  the 
operatives,  and  the  owners  too,  of  course  ;  and 

2.  That  diminution  of  profits  and  increase  of 
wages  came  only  after  the  most  bitter  contests  be- 
tween owners  and  operatives,  in  which  the  latter 
were  victorious. 

Wages  have  always  been  raised  by  the  laborers, 
not  by  the  capitalists.  The  latter,  naturally,  resist. 
They  fear  that  their  per  cent,  profit  will  be  de- 
creased. So  it  will,  but  quantity  will  be  increased. 
The  two  interests  never  can  harmonize.  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  spontaneous  rise  in  wages.  Look 
at  the  cotton  factory,  and  I  call  up  this  matter  to 
emphasize  the  fact  that  every  attempted  improve- 
ment in  the  condition  of  the  operatives,  that  is,  every 
attempt  to  increase   their  wages,   directly   or    indi- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


71 


rectly,  has  been  resisted  by  the  factory  lords  to  the 
last.  They  have  resorted  to  every  device  to  keep 
down  wages,  and  have  never  increased  them  till 
after  a  bitter  struggle.  At  first,  to  swell  the  profits 
of  these  men,  little  children  were  forced  into  the 
mills  to  compete  with  adults  for  employment.  Fre- 
quently, all  night  long,  until  a  meddlesome  legis- 
lature interfered,  the  little  things  might  be  seen  at 
their  exhaustive  toil.  By  the  agents  of  these  mills 
hundreds  of  children,  unknown  to  their  parents,  were 
swept  into  the  factories  to  live  and  die  there,  never 
heard  of  by  their  friends  again.  The  living  fre- 
quently awoke  in  the  morning  beside  a  dead  com- 
panion. The  children  worked  day  and  night  and 
Sundays,  often  for  sixteen  hours  at  a  stretch,  fre- 
quently in  exhaustion  falling  into  the  machinery  to 
be  torn  in  pieces.  Pigs  fed  in  pens  contiguous  to 
the  factory  kitchens  were  better  fed  than  the  chil- 
dren, who,  in  their  greedy  hunger,  stole  the  swill 
from  the  troughs  in  the  sties.  They  were  put  in 
irons  as  the  master  or  overseer  misrht  direct.  When 
they  died,  they  were  pitched  into  unmarked 
trenches. 

Had  it  not  been  for  strikes  and  lesi'islative  inter- 
ference,  which  worked  a  limitation  of  the  margin  of 
profits,  these  same  scandals  would  exist  to-day.  We 
still  have  ill-paid  and  under-fed  children  in  the  mills 
of  Massachusetts,  competing  with  their  parents  for 
meagre  wages.     It  happens  that  among  the  poor  the 


74 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


whole  family  must  suffer.  It  is  their  children  who 
must  cramp  their  lives  and  smother  their  better  as- 
pirations in  the  factory  and  the  shop.  If  we  could 
only  apportion  this  thing  better !  Say,  let  the  poor 
men  and  women  continue  on  as  they  are,  but  send 
the  children  of  the  rich  into  the  factories  and  the 
stores. 

We  aspire,  however,  to  take  the  children  alto- 
gether out  of  employment,  but  every  effort  made  in 
this  direction  is  met  with  hateful  obstinacy. 

Nothinof  that  is  worth  havino-  comes  without  ef- 
fort.  In  England  the  factory  hours  of  labor  have 
been  successively  reduced  till  they  are  now  a  little 
less  than  nine  and  a  half  a  day. 

In  Massachusetts,  by  the  law  of  1874,  the  factory 
operatives  were  deprived  of  disposing  of  their  time 
for  more  than  ten  hours  a  day.  What  a  loss  of 
liberty !  Mr.  Atkinson  says  the  only  element  we 
have  in  common  is  our  time.  That  is  true  before 
we  dispose  of  it.  If  I  sell  myself  or  have  the  privi- 
lege of  selling  myself  for  twelve  hours  a  day,  am  I  a 
freer  man  than  if  I  sell  myself  or  can  sell  myself  for 
only  ten  hours  a  day  ?  Is  a  Chinaman  freer  than  an 
American  because  he  can  sell  himself  for  seven 
years  ?  I  take  it  that  a  man's  freedom  is  indicated 
by  the  time  he  does  not  work  for  another,  not  by 
the  time  he  does.  Mr.  Atkinson  pities  the  long- 
hour  wives.  Does  one's  wife  work  less  the  longer 
her  husband  works?     If  she  works  fourteen  hours  a 


THE      MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


n 


day  it  is  because  her  husband  works  ten,  not  because 
he  works  eight.  She  has  to  rise  too  early  in  the 
morning  or  sit  up  too  late  at  night.  What  is  the 
remedy?  Cut  down  the  hours  of  the  man's  labor,  of 
course.  The  earlier  his  breakfast  or  the  later  his 
supper,  the  worse  for  her.  Mr.  Atkinson  says,  if  we 
cut  down  the  hours  we  cut  down  the  product ;  that 
there  will  be  fewer  goods  ;  fewer  stoves  ;  fewer  tools; 
fewer  houses  ;  and  that  means  a  higher  price  and  a 
higher  rent.  That  is  sheer  nonsense.  We  are  cut- 
ting down  the  hours  all  the  time,  and  yet  producing 
more  than  ever.  As  he  tells  us  to-night  he  told  us 
in  1S74,  that  if  we  passed  the  ten-hour  law  we  would 
stop  production  and  drive  capital  out  of  Massachu- 
setts. 

Well,  the  law  was  passed,  and  the  capital  and  pro- 
duction in  this  industry  is  greater  than  ever.  The 
reduction  in  the  hours  of  labor  increases  production 
right  away.  If  there  were  not  enough  goods  to  go 
round  we  would  make  more. 

But  he  says  the  capacity  of  his  mills  would  be  no 
greater,  and  all  are  fully  employed  now.  We  would 
set  the  idle  men  to  build  new  mills.  We  would  in- 
vent new  looms,  and  new  spinning  rings. 

Here's  my  friend  White.  He  has  invented  a  stock- 
ing knitter.  Makes  a  whole  stocking  and  shapes  it. 
The  stockinof  don't  have  to  orothroufrh  three  m.achines 
and  be  seamed  up.  It  comes  from  the  machine 
completely  finished.     No  factory  has  his  machines. 


76  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

Why?  Under  present  demand  the  manufacturers 
can  get  along  with  their  old  machines,  and  they  do 
not  care  for  the  expense  of  replacing  by  new.  It 
pays  them  better  to  keep  his  machine  out  of  the 
market.  If  the  production  on  old  machines  was 
lessened,  how  long  would  manufacturers  wait  before 
getting  new  ?  Two  hours'  reduction  in  labor  will 
add  twenty  per  cent,  to  production. 

Mr.  Atkinson  intimates  that  it  is  increase  of  pro- 
duction that  reduces  the  hours  of  labor.  He  is  all 
wrong.  He  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse.  Why 
did  not  a  reduction  occur  long  ago  then  ?  For  we 
long  since  passed  the  point  when  the  per  cent,  in- 
crease on  production  surpassed  the  per  cent,  decrease 
in  the  hours  of  labpr.  As  he  says,  while  we  work 
less  hours  now,  we  get  more  pay  than  when  we 
worked  long  hours,  and  our  pay  has  a  greater  pur- 
chasing power.  That  is  the  theory  that  Labor  is 
acting  on  all  the  time. 

They  get  acts  of  legislatures  to  pass  ten-hour  laws  ; 
they  strike  for  nine  or  eight,  and  the  employers  fight 
them  all  the  time  like  tio^ers,  tellin"-  them  :  "  You  will 
stop  production,  you  will  lessen  your  wages ;  "  and 
yet,  somehow,  sooner  or  later,  after  a  great  deal  of 
hard  work,  the  workmen  get  their  ten,  nine,  or  eight 
hours.  Then  the  same  men  that  fouMit  them  so  hard 
come  up  smiling  and  say  :  "  How  things  have  im- 
proved, but  don't  do  it  again."  The  nearer  you  can 
keep  consumption  to  production — that  is,  the  more 


THE  MARGIiV  OF  PROFITS.  77 

you  can  reduce  the  margin  of  profits,  the  better  will  it 
be  for  the  rich  as  well  as  the  poor.  Every  reduction 
in  the  hours  of  labor  throws  new  producers  and  con- 
sumers into  the  market — this,  necessarily,  increases 
and  cheapens  the  product.  More  in  the  aggregate, 
and  more  per  capita  is  produced.  For  instance  :  the 
number  of  employes  engaged  in  the  manufacture  of 
cotton  goods  in  the  United  States  in  i85o,  was  94,- 
956.  By  the  census  of  i860,  the  number  of  em- 
ployes had  increased  to  122,028,  or  28.5  per  cent. 
The  product  of  i860  exceeded  that  of  i85o  by  76.6 
in  value,  and  in  the  quantity  of  cloth  by  50.3  per 
cent,  and  in  the  quantity  of  yarn,  batting,  and  warps, 
by  100  per  cent.  The  production  of  cotton  goods 
of  all  kinds,  per  capita,  was,  in  i85o,  $2.82,  in  i860, 
13.60. 

The  average  annual  wages  of  each  factory  opera- 
tive was  $176,  in  1850  ;  and  $196,  in  i860.  The  av- 
erage value  produced  by  each  operative,  in  i85o, 
was  $668  ;  in  i860  it  was  $948  per  annum. 

In  New  England  alone,  for  i860,  the  cotton  cloth 
produced  by  each  operative  was  1,127  yards  more 
per  annum  than  in  i85o.  The  number  of  operatives 
had  increased  29.3  per  cent. 

The  reduction  of  working  hours  not  only  increases 
the  aggregate  and  per  capita  production  by  making 
room  for  more  workers,  but  increases   the  ratio  of 
consumption.    The  total  consumption  must  be  more,   / 
for  there  are  more  to  be  paid,  but  the  consumption 


78  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

per  capita  is  greater.  For  instance,  the  people  of 
the  United  States  used  up  three  times  as  many 
yards  of  cotton  cloth  per  capita  in  i860  as  they  did 
in  1830.  A  man  who  works  in  a  dirty  mine  ten  or 
twelve  hours  a  day  will  not  think  much  about  clean 
shirts.  He  hardly  wants  a  tin  basin  in  which  to 
wash  on  a  Sunday.  The  more  time  he  has  to  him- 
self the  greater  will  be  his  needs.  It  is  natural  to 
grow.  Only  give  him  the  chance.  Build  the  man. 
Material  comforts  come  after  he  wants  them,  not  be- 
fore. Books  are  useless  till  men  can  read.  The 
hours  of  labor  were  not  reduced  because  presses 
had  been  invented  which  spun  off  thousands  of  miles 
of  newspapers  a  day  and  men  wanted  time  to  read 
them.  They  got  the  time  and  wanted  the  papers. 
Leisure  is  the  mother  of  Production,  not  her  daugh- 
ter. More  time  for  the  worker  means  more  wages, 
greater  production,  and  enlarged  consumption.  The 
factory  operatives  in  Massachusetts  work  more  than 
two  days  less  per  month  than  the  factory  opera- 
tives of  the  neighboring  States  do,  yet  receive  $2,52 
per  month  more  wages.  Mr.  Atkinson  is  very 
much  afraid  that  if  we  diminish  profits  we  shall  lose 
the  service  of  the  rich  men.  Poor  fellows  !  what 
will  they  do  then,  lay  down  and  die  ?  It  was  thought 
once  that  there  could  be  no  society  without  a  king 
and  nobility.  We  get  along  very  well  without 
them,  and  we  shall  get  along  very  well  in  a  republic 
of  labor  when  it  comes.     We  shall  find,  however,  as 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


79 


we  go  along,  and  as  we  always  have  found,  that  a 
reduction  of  the  profit  margin  means  a  greater  abun- 
dance of  wealth  to  everyone  who  in  any  capacity  is 
eneaeed  in  the  useful  labor  of  the  world. 

That  class  that  profits,  or  rather,  thinks  it  profits, 
by  the  disorganization  of  labor,  is  continually  talking 
to  the  workingmen  about  their  loss  of  liberty.  Be 
masters  of  yourselves,  your  actions,  and  your  time,  is 
its  continual  cry. 

As  labor  associations  are  independent  of  the  law, 
their  decrees  can  be  no  more  than  requests  to  their 
members,  who  may  obey  or  not  obey  as  they  see  fit. 
Unanimity  of  action  arises  from  unanimity  of  senti- 
ment. The  power  of  the  eniployer  over  the  work- 
men is  great.  The  employer  is  backed  by  the 
State.  The  workmen  have  to  rely  upon  themselves. 
The  employer  may  discharge  and  lock  the  doors, 
and  the  power  of  the  government  would  be  invoked 
to  sustain  the  employer  in  his  legal  rights  if  the 
workmen  dared  to  question  them.  The  right  to  live 
and  the  right  to  work  is  no  legal  right,  and  the  work- 
man must  take  the  consequences  if  he  pretends  to 
any  such  rights  and  acts  as  if  he  had  them.  To 
meet  this  irresponsible  power  of  discharge,  the 
workers  have  unions  whose  existence  is  only  main- 
tained by  preserving  and  nourishing  a  feeling  of 
brotherhood  among  the  members.  There  is  no  sur- 
render of  individual  liberty  that  cannot  at  any  mo- 
ment be  resumed.     Through  the  operations  of  these 


8o  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

societies,  as  most  persons  are  ready  to  acknowledge, 
wages  have  been  increased,  and  the  hours  of  labor 
shortened.  Organization  is  the  forerunner  of  prog- 
ress. The  non-union  men  profit  by  what  the  unions 
have  done  for  labor.  They  understand  that,  and  it 
would  be  impossible  to  unite  them  in  a  sentiment  of 
hostility  to  labor  organizations. 

It  is  their  poverty  that  keeps  them  out  for  the 
most  part. 

In  this  connection  Mr.  Atkinson  reminds  us  of 
the  American  Revolution.  The  reminder  was  apt, 
for  that  Revolution  began,  if  you  remember,  as  ours 
has  done,  with  a  series  of  defeats. 

In  the  first  year  we  had  Lexington  and  Bunker 
Hill,  glorious  now,  but  depressing  then.  What  has 
happened  to  us  the  past  year  ?  Defeat  of  stock-yard 
men  at  Chicago,  of  freight  handlers  in  New  York, 
of  horse-car  men  in  Boston.  What  of  that?  As 
our  fathers  looked  through  the  gloom  of  the  first 
years  of  the  Revolution,  so  we  see  dawning  in  our 
mightier  struggle,  through  present  shadows  of  fail- 
ure, the  glories  of  our  future  battle-fields,  of  our 
Saratosfas  and  our  Yorktowns. 

o 


MR.  ATKINSON'S    REJOINDER 

TO 

MR.    CHAMBERLIN. 

I  MUST  take  up  my  little  water-pot,  to  which  my 
friend  Mr.  Chamberlin  has  referred  in  his  reply  to 
me,  in  order  to  throw  a  little  cold  water  upon  the 
rhetoric  in  which  he  has  indulged.  I  have  followed 
him  with  care,  and  have  failed  to  find  any  substan- 
tial fact  in  his  own  statements,  or  any  statement  of 
error  in  the  facts  which  I  have  presented.  All  that 
I  do  find  is  a  misinterpretation  of  the  facts. 

On  one  point  I  must  say  that  I  most  heartily  agree 
with  him.  If  the  parents  of  young  children  are  so 
ignorant,  so  brutal,  or  even  so  poor  as  to  be  willing 
to  overwork  them,  the  State  should  come  in  and  be- 
come guardian  for  those  who  have  no  natural  pro- 
tectors. What  I  object  to  is  the  State  undertaking 
to  take  away  the  freedom  of  contract  from  adult 
men  who  are  capable  of  managing  their  own  affairs. 

In  reference  to  the  day,  I  have  said  that  Sunday 
should  be  a  day  of  rest  and  of  r^-Creation  ;  not  of 
amusement,  but  of  reviving  the  spirit  of  the  man  in  a 
wholesome  and  proper  way  ;  creating  again,  accord- 


82  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

ing  to  the  etymology  of  the  word,  all  the  parts  which 
may  have  been  overstrained  during  the  week-day 
work. 

I  should  be  very  sorry  to  think  that  I  could  be  so 
little  comprehended  as  to  have  it  appear  that  I  did 
not  know  as  well  as  Mr.  Chamberlin  how  deplorably 
narrow  the  conditions  of  life  are  to  the  great  major- 
ity of  working  men  and  women.  Who  has  treated 
the  subject  more  fully  than  myself?  Who  has  at- 
tempted to  make  a  closer  measurement  ? 

I  can  assure  you  that  since  I  began  to  study  this 
question  and  to  know  something  of  the  adverse  con- 
ditions under  which  great  masses  of  people  must 
live,  not  a  day  has  passed  when  some  contrast  of 
wealth  and  poverty  has  not  brought  up  to  my  own 
mind  the  fact,  which  is  almost  appalling,  that  even  in 
this  prosperous  country  the  annual  product,  if  evenly 
divided,  would  not  give  to  each  man,  woman,  and 
child  on  the  average  more  than  what  fifty  to  fifty- 
five  cents  a  day  will  buy.  Not  a  day  passes  but 
what  this  question  presents  itself— how  can  this  pro- 
duct be  increased?  How  can  the  work  be  dimin- 
ished ?  How  can  the  product  be  more  evenly  dis- 
tributed ?  How  can  the  monotony  of  modern  factory 
work  be  relieved  ?  Charity  will  not  accomplish  it. 
Legislation  will  not  accomplish  it.  How  can  the 
work  be  done  ?  Is  there  any  other  way  than  by 
education  ?  by  the  development  both  of  the  hand  as 
well  as  of  the  head  of  each  single  person  ?     Can  we 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


83 


begin  in  any  other  way  than  by  beginning  with  the 
children  ? 

I  know  many  men  and  yet  more  women,  whose 
wealth  is  but  a  responsibility,  a  heavy  charge  ;  who 
would,  if  called  upon  to  do  so,  take  all  that  they 
have  2Sid.  give  to  the  poor  ;  but  they  know,  as  you 
know,  that  to  give  fortunes  to  the  poor  would  only  in- 
crease pauperism,  vice,  and  laziness.  Pauperism  will 
never  be  removed  by  charity.  Poverty  will  never 
be  removed  by  legislation.  The  world  is  an  oyster, 
but  there  are  many  who  cannot  open  the  shell,  even 
if  you  give  them  a  knife.  Each  man  must  learn  how 
to  use  the  knife  before  he  can  open  that  shell  with- 
out wastins:  what  it  contains. 

Some  of  you  look  upon  every  man  who  possesses 
wealth  or  capital  as  having  taken  it  from  workmen 
without  compensation.  You  are  wrong,  and  when 
you  attempt  to  mislead  others  with  such  false  views 
of  life  you  are  something  more  than  wrong.  But 
you  do  not  do  much  harm  because  there  is  an  in- 
stinct or  common  sense  which  sfoverns  the  action  of 
the  great  mass  of  men  and  leads  them  to  reject  such 
shallow  sophistry,  even  though  they  cannot  meet 
your  statements  or  do  not  think  it  worth  while. 

By  the  use  of  capital  the  product  of  food,  fuel,  and 
other  necessaries  of  life  is  increased  in  vastly  greater 
measure  than  the  share  which  falls  to  capital  is  in- 
creased. In  rich  countries  there  is  no  general  poverty, 
no  danger  of  wide-spread  want.       What  we  need  to 


84  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

treat  is  the  distribution  of  this  product.  Yet,  even 
in  a  rich  country  Hke  ours,  the  product  may  still  be 
too  small  to  permit  much  rest  from  work. 

It  is  not  the  question  of  money  to  be  paid  or 
earned,  but  of  money's  worth  to  be  put  to  use  ;  and 
if,  as  I  believe,  the  utmost  now  produced  in  this 
whole  country  is  only,  on  the  average,  fifty  cents' 
worth  per  day  of  food,  fuel,  shelter,  and  clothing  for 
each  person,  or  what  one  dollar  and  a  half  will  buy 
at  retail  prices  for  each  worker  in  a  group  of  three, 
how,  then,  can  we  improve  the  conditions  of  men 
except  either  by  increasing  the  product  or  by  doing 
more  work  in  the  same  time  ?  On  the  other  hand, 
how  can  we  reduce  the  hours  of  work  without  in- 
creasing the  want,  unless  good  workmen  can  learn 
how  to  produce  more  in  less  time  than  they  now 
devote  to  their  several  arts  ? 

Can  you  doubt  that  men  who  are  prosperous 
themselves  would  not  be  eager  to  have  every  work- 
man share  in  their  prosperity  ?  Who  would  not 
be  glad  to  have  them  able  to  take  their  supper 
in  future  at  six  o'clock  instead  of  at  seven,  as  Mr, 
Chamberlin  says  ?  What  I  and  others  like  my- 
self desire  to  promote  is,  that  every  workman  can 
get  a  better  supper  at  six  o'clock  than  he  now 
can  get  at  seven  ;  but  that  depends  almost  wholly 
upon  himself  and  not  upon  some  other  man.  Mr. 
Chamberlin  alleges  that  I  say  that  men  must  econo- 
mize ;  must  eat  beef  at  five  cents  a  pound  instead 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


85 


of  at  twenty  ;  must  lay  by  something ;  and  that  in 
time  he  will  work  out  of  his  class.  I  do  not  admit 
any  such  distinction  of  class.  What  I  do  say  is 
this  :  that  each  man  and  woman  may  learn  for  them- 
selves how  to  get  a  better  meal  even  out  of  beef  at 
five  cents  a  pound  than  many  now  get  out  of  beef 
at  twenty  cents  a  pound,  or  better  nutrition  out  of 
twenty  cent  beef,  if  they  can  afford  that.  The 
epitaph  to  which  I  hope  to  be  entitled  on  my  monu- 
ment is  this — "  He  taught  the  American  People 
how  to  stew."  If  I  can  do  that  I  shall  be  the  sfreat 
benefactor  of  the  workingman.     (See  Appendix.) 

It  seems  to  me  that  Mr.  Chamberlin  has  adopted 
the  fundamental  error  which  vitiates  the  whole  rea- 
soning of  Karl  Marx,  Lasalle,  and  of  all  other  social- 
istic writers,  namely  :  that  if  the  cost  or  price  of 
living  is  reduced  either  by  the  workman,  or  for  the 
workman,  his  wages  will,  therefore,  be  reduced  in 
the  same  measure.  So  far  as  this  country  is  con- 
cerned, this  form  of  reasoning  and  of  conclusion  are 
both  absolutely  without  foundation  in  fact. 

(In  preparing  this  rejoinder  for  publication  in 
book  form  I  am  enabled  to  give  some  of  the  proofs 
of  this  statement  ;  see  note  A  below.) 


Note  A. — By  making  use  of  the  statistics  of  wages  and  prices  which  have 
been  gathered  by  Col.  Carroll  D.  Wright,  for  the  National  Bureau  of  Statis- 
tics, as  well  as  for  Massachusetts  ;  from  the  data  of  other  State  Bureaus;  from 
the  United  States  Census,  Volume  No.  XX.,  compiled  by  Mr.  Joseph  D. 
Weeks  ;  and  from  my  own  compilations,  I  have  been  able  to  establish 
certain  facts  in  a  way  which  has,  perhaps,  never  before  been  done. 


S6  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

I  have  never  heard  a  statement  more  likely  to 
mislead  than  the  one  made  by  Mr.  Chamberlin, 
namely  :  "The  more  expensive  we  are,  the  higher 
our  wages."  Neither  have  I  ever  heard  a  more 
ludicrous  or  erroneous  statement  than  the  one  which 
follows  :  "  If  all  laborers  could  save  in  cookinof,  the 
employers  would  profit  by  the  saving,  not  the  work- 
men." 

Having  ascertained  what  are  the  actual  purchases  for  food  by  mechanics 
and  working  people  in  this  and  in  other  parts  of  the  country,  under  the 
different  heads  of  meat,  fish,  vegetables,  dairy  products,  and  the  like ;  hav- 
ing next  ascertained  the  avei^age  consumption  of  cloth  for  clothing,  taking 
for  examples  five  specific  kinds  of  cotton  and  four  specific  kinds  of  woolen 
goods  ;  to  these  I  add  boots,  shoes,  and  fuel.  This  table,  llicrefore,  con- 
sists of  the  same  quantities  of  the  same  kinds  of  the  necessaries  of  life,  the 
cost  of  which  comes  to  about  three-fourths  of  what  you  spend  for  a  living  ; 
the  rest  of  what  you  spend  is  for  rent  and  sundries.  To  these  quantities  I 
have  put  the  prices  year  by  year  back  to  i860 ;  then  I  have  taken  the  wages 
of  the  different  classes  of  workmen  as  they  actually  were  in  i860,  1865, 1870, 
1875,  1880,  and  1885.  By  dividing  the  cost  of  one  day's  portion  of  these 
necessaries  of  life,  food,  fuel,  and  clothing,  into  the  year's  earnings,  I  have 
thus  determined  what  a  man  could  buy  for  a  year's  work  with  a  year's  earn- 
ings at  each  period.  I  find  the  price  of  rent,  where  men  did  not  own  their 
own  houses,  has  varied  in  about  the  same  way,  perhaps  not  quite  so  much ; 
but  I  have  left  out  rent,  because  the  rooms  or  the  houses  hired  by  workmen 
differ  so  much  in  the  city  and  country,  and  in  different  parts  of  the  countiy 
according  to  the  climate. 

Now,  then,  I  find  that  the  overseer,  the  foreman,  and  the  high-priced  me- 
chanic who  could  buy  in  i860  with  one  year's  wages  2,374  portions  of  food, 
fuel,  and  clothing,  could  buy  only  1,920  of  the  same  portions  in  1865  ;  and 
they  can  now  buy  4,000  portions. 

I  find  that  the  machinist,  engineer,  carpenter,  and  painter  who  are  good 
workmen,  and  who  never  lack  employment,  because  they  are  good  workmen, 
could  buy  in  i860,  1,512  portions;  in  1S65,  1,261  portions;  and  they  can 
now  buy  2.400  portions. 

I  find  that  the  average  adult  man  or  woman  wlio  works  eitiier  in  a  textile 
factory  or  in  a  clothing  factory,  in  tanneries,  iron  works,  or  machine-shops. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


^7 


I  have  been  unable  to  account  for  this  stupendous 
error  except  by  considering  the  condition  of  Ger- 
many in  its  contrast  with  the  conditions  of  this  coun- 
try. Germany  has  a  limited  area,  not  as  large  as 
the    single    State    of  Texas ;  a    dense    population  ; 

could  buy  in  iS6o,  1,290 portions  ;  in  1865,  1,013  portions  ;  can  now  buy  I, Soo 
portions  ;  and  the  common  laborer  who  could  buy  980  portions  in  1S60  and 
840  portions  in  1S65,  can  now  buy  1,400  portions.  Therefore  every  man  or 
woman  is  better  off  now  than  in  i860  on  a  gold  standard  ;  a  great  deal  better 
off  than  in  1S65  when  paper  money  was  picking  your  pockets  and  stealing 
your  earnings  away  from  you,  although  you  did  not  believe  it  then,  and  some 
of  you  do  not  believe  it  now.  The  plane  of  comfort  and  welfare  is  steadily 
rising  for  all,  but  in  greater  measure  to  the  skilled  than  to  the  common  la- 
borer. 

On  the  other  hand,  capital,  which  merely  as  capital  without  any  brains  be- 
hind it,  could  earn  for  its  owners  in  i860  seven  or  eight  per  cent,  a  year,  now 
earns  for  its  owners  only  three  and  one-half  to  four  per  cent.  Who  is  ahead 
on  that  hne  ? 

Again  :  In  i860  the  price  of  a  heavy  cotton  sheeting  was  eight  and  one- 
fourth  cents  a  yard  ;  the  cost  of  labor  in  the  yard  was  ninety-five  one-hun- 
dredths  of  a  cent  :  and  the  average  earnings  of  the  factory  operative,  omit- 
ting second  hands  and  overseers,  and  including  only  the  men,  women,  and 
children  who  did  the  actual  work  of  the  factory,  were  $207,  which  would 
buy  669  portions  of  food,  fuel,  and  clothing.  In  1885,  the  price  of  the  same 
heavy  sheeting  was  six  and  one-eighth  cents,  the  cost  of  labor  in  the  yard  of 
cloth  was  the  same  as  in  i860,  ninety-five  one-hundredths  of  a  cent,  but  the 
wages  had  gone  up  to  $284.  They  are  now  $300,  and  are  now  purchasing 
twice  as  much  as  in  i860. 

Again  :  A  suit  of  common  chamber  furniture,  the  price  of  which  was 
thirty-five  dollars  in  i860,  with  cost  of  the  labor  in  it  twelve  dollars,  was 
made  by  workmen  who  earned  $456  each  per  year  ;  in  1880  the  price  of 
that  same  suit  of  furniture  was  twenty  dollars,  the  cost  of  the  labor  eight 
dollars,  and  the  earnings  of  the  workmen  $723  a  year  in  gold. 

Or  again,  a  dozen  steel  axes  which  were  sold  in  1S60  for  eleven  dollars, 
were  sold  in  18S0  for  $8.50  ;  while  the  day's  wages  of  the  workman,  which, 
in  i860,  was  $1.70,  in  1880  was  $2.26. 

All  these  examples  are  taken  from  the  same  factory  or  workshop,  right 
from  the  books,  and  they  are  correct. 


88  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

and  a  bureaucratic  or  paternal  grovernment  endowed 
\vith  privileges  derived  from  feudal  ages,  which  are 
no  longer  accompanied  with  corresponding  duties. 
At  the  same  time  it  is  burdened  with  the  enormous 
expense  of  a  standing  army ;  and  the  work  of  the 
most  competent  of  her  young  men  at  their  most  pro- 

An  open  spring  wagon,  such  as  is  used  by  farmers  : 

Price  in  iS6o,  $150  ;  day's  wages,  §1.84. 

Price  in  1S80,  fli5;  day's  wages,  $2.37. 
A  horse-rake  : 

Price  in  1865,  ^35  ;  day's  wages,  '$1.93  (in  paper). 

Price  in  1880,  $24  ;  day's  wages,  ^1.76. 

The  price  is  now  less,  and  the  wages  are  now  higher  than  they  were  in 
1865.  All  this  change  is  due  to  science  and  invention.  The  greatest 
change  of  this  kind  lias  happened  in  regard  to  glass  tumblers,  goblets,  etc. 
A  certain  quality  and  quantity  of  glass  ware,  which  was  sold  in  i860  for 
$11.60,  can  now  be  bought  for  $2.80.  The  wages  of  the  workmen  in  the 
shop  where  this  glass  is  made  went  up  from  •'?i.23  in  1S60  to  .^1.62  in  1880  ; 
and  they  are  now  $1.75. 

You  may  make  what  you  can  of  these  figures  ;  they  are  facts.  If  you  can- 
not live  now  comfortably  on  what  you  can  earn,  how  could  you  live  at  all  in 
i860  and  1865,  on  what  you  then  earned,  and  were  obliged  to  pay  out  at 
higher  prices  than  you  now  pay  ? 

These  are  hard  cjuestions.  I  don't  ask  you  to  be  contented  with  your 
present  condition.  I  say  to  you,  wheresoever  your  lot  may  be  cast,  learn 
therewith  to  be  discontented  ;  try  to  do  better  ;  but  don't  try  to  make  every 
other  workman  do  what  you  think  is  right,  and  what  he  tliinks  is  wrong. 
Let  him  take  his  way,  and  you  take  yours.  If  the  other  man  gets  ahead  of 
you,  hadn't  you  better  try  his  way,  and  give  up  yours  ? 

I  once  went  over  a  factory  with  a  man  who  was  supposed  to  have  some 
secrets  in  it.  I  asked  him  why  he  let  me  or  any  other  man  go  over  his  fac- 
tory. "Oh,"  said  he,  "  I  am  going  with  you,  ain't  I ?  I  always  do  go  with 
everybody  who  wants  to  go  over  my  factory,  because  any  fool  can  teach  me 
something."  That's  the  way  he  learned  his  business.  Perhaps  that's  a  good 
way  for  you  to  learn  yours.  I  always  found  it  a  good  way  after  I  learned 
the  trick  ;  and  I  find  there  are  a  great  many  fools  in  the  world  who  can 
teach  me  a  great  deal. 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


89 


ductive  period  of  life  is  diverted  to  the  destructive 
purposes  of  war  or  of  preparation  for  war.  There  is 
not  enough  produced  to  go  around  even  if  all  were 
enjoyed  by  those  who  do  the  productive  work  ;  and 
so  large  a  part  of  even  what  is  produced  is  diverted 
by  an  onerous  and  inquisitorial  system  of  taxation, 
that  the  population  of  considerable  sections  of  the 
poorer  parts  of  Germany  are  underfed  ;  they  are 
becoming  less  and  less  capable  to  meet  the  struggle 
for  life.  But  this  is  not  the  oppression  of  capital  in 
any  sense,  it  is  the  oppression  of  the  blood  tax  of 
war.  These  conditions  find  no  counterpart  in  this 
country.  Your  own  common  sense  will  tell  you,  if 
you  will  allow  it  to  have  free  play,  that  what  you 
can  save  by  intelligent  methods  of  buying  your  food 
and  your  clothing,  and  what  you  can  save  by  better 
cooking,  may  either  be  added  to  your  own  capital 
or  may  be  expended  by  you  in  improving  the  condi- 
tions of  your  lives.  If  you  are  not  capable  of  realiz- 
ing this  fact  out  of  your  own  experience,  then  it 
would  be  useless  for  me  to  attempt  to  explain  it. 
Sensible  men,  mechanics,  factory  operatives,  work- 
ing men  and  women  are  adopting  some  of  the  little 
inventions  which  I  have  made,  and  are  at  this  time 
enjoying  more  leisure,  better  food,  and  better  con- 
ditions of  life  ;  they  are  saving  their  time  by  this 
means,  whether  you  care  or  not. 

Facts  speak  louder  than  words.     Study  this  ques- 
tion for  yourselves  ;  it  is  a  practical   one  ;  and  do 


90 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


not  be  misled  either  by  Mr.  Chamberlin  or  by  my- 
self.    Find  out  who  is  ricrht  and  then  <70  ahead. 

I  do  not  say  that  men  should  work  "out  of  their 
class."  It  is  impossible  in  any  considerable  meas- 
ure. As  time  goes  on,  a  greater  and  greater 
number,  not  only  of  those  who  are  now  poor,  but  of 
those  wdio  are  well  off  will  be,  must  be,  and  must 
remain  in  the  class  of  hard-working  people ;  but 
what  will  be  called  the  hard  work  of  the  next  gen- 
eration would  be  considered  the  leisure  of  the  pres- 
ent, as  the  hard  work  of  to-day  would  have  been 
leisure  to  the  men  of  a  generation  ago. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  attempts  to  counter  the  hard 
facts  which  I  have  stated  by  imputing  to  me  sym- 
pathy with  such  rigid  observers  of  Sunday  as  those 
who  defend  the  employment  of  steam  and  horse-car 
conductors  seven  days  in  the  week,  upon  the  plea 
that  they  could  not  otherwise  attend  divine  service 
on  the  Sabbath.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  such 
persons.  What  I  would  do,  and  what  I  have  done, 
is  to  improve  the  art  of  cooking,  so  that  not  only  I 
myself,  but  my  cook,  can  go  to  church  on  Sunday, 
and  yet  both  have  a  good  dinner  on  our  return  from 
the  service. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  alleges  that  I  move  in  a  small, 
narrow  circle.  It  is  but  too  true  ;  but  it  is  a  circle 
from  the  narrow  confines  of  which  there  may  be  a 
broad  outlook.  I  have  said,  however,  in  my  address, 
that  one  of  the  things  most  needed  is,  that  the  man 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


91 


who  is  the  most  prosperous  should  know  something 
of  how  the  poor  are  obliged  to  live  ;  and  to  that  end 
when  the  figures  are  arrayed,  and  the  facts  are  pic- 
tured in  black  lines,  proving  how  narrow  the  condi- 
tions of  life  must  be  even  in  this  prosperous  coun- 
try, may  it  not  help  even  the  rich  to  a  conception  of 
duties  as  well  as  of  rights  ?  But  even  from  such  a 
stand-point,  one  may  justify  the  wealth  which  brings 
about  greater  abundance  for  the  poorest  in  the 
community  by  its  use  in  their  service. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says  that  it  appears  to  him  that 
there  are  two  very  well-defined  classes  at  the  least, 
"  those  who  pay  wages  and  those  who  receive 
them  ;  "  "  over  there  is  capital  ;  here  is  labor  ;  life 
is  a  contest ;  "  etc. 

If  it  seems  so  to  him,  then  I  think  the  fault  is  in 
his  spectacles,  and  that  he  does  not  see  the  true  dis- 
tinction. 

In  the  first  place,  although  there  must  always  be 
a  division  of  any  given  product  into  the  respective 
portions  of  wages  or  earnings,  profits,  and  taxes  ; 
and  although  at  any  given  period  there  may  be,  and 
probably  always  will  be,  the  employers  and  the  em- 
ployed, yet  the  members  of  these  two  "  classes,"  if 
Mr.  Chamberlin   chooses  to  call  them  so,  are  con-  , 
stantly  changing  frorn  one  to  the  other  according  to  , 
their  respective  capacity  and  ability.     I  cannot  keep  | 
you  down,  and  you  cannot  hold  me  up,  if  you  have 
the  capacity  to  rise,  and  I  am  unable  to  meet  the 


92 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


conditions  in  which  we  happen  to  have  been  placed. 
I  think  it  is  not  true  that  the  lower  the  wages,  the 
larger  the  profits,  as  a  general  proposition.  In  fact, 
I  know  it  is  not  true.  I  know  this  :  that  if  we  take 
the  product  of  any  given  single  year  of  any  given 
mill  or  workshop,  sell  it  at  the  market  price,  and 
divide  the  money,  then  of  course  by  so  much  as  the 
profits  are  greater  will  the  wages  be  less  in  that  sin- 
gle year  out  of  that  special  product  ;  but  in  the  next 
year  the  competition  of  capital  with  capital,  in  order 
to  gain  a  share  of  any  excessive  profit,  will  change 
these  conditions  ;  new  capital  will  come  in  bidding 
higher  wages  for  those  who  can  do  the  work,  and 
reducing  the  profit  of  the  owners  who  are  already 
engaged  in  it.  In  the  long  run  this  is  the  fact ;  it 
has  been  well  said  by  Mr.  Henry  C.  Carey,  by 
Frederick  Bastiat,  and  by  other  writers  of  the  most 
opposite  schools,  "  that  in  ratio  to  the  increase  of 
capital,  the  share  of  the  product  falling  to  capital 
may  be  absolutely  increased,  but  will  be  relatively 
decreased,  while  the  share  of  the  workman  will  be 
increased  both  absolutely  and  relatively."  There  is 
not  an  art  of  any  considerable  importance  in  this 
country,  in  the  history  of  which  this  principle  can- 
not be  proved.  The  proportion  of  every  given 
product  of  every  kind,  which  the  laborer  secures 
to  himself  has  steadily  increased  year  by  year, 
subject  to  the  exceptional  period  of  our  Civil 
War;    while    the   proportion  of  the   same  product 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  03 

falling  to  capital  has  steadily  decreased  year  by 
year. 

(Reference  may  again  be  made  to  the  note  which 
has  been  added  to  a  preceding  page.) 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says  that  "  the  lines  which  divide 
the  two  forces  of  labor  and  capital  are  as  well  de- 
fined as  those  which  divide  the  earth  from  the  sky, 
or  the  land  from  the  ocean."  I  differ  with  him. 
These  lines  are  constantly  merging  one  into  the 
other ;  they  never  hold  the  same  relation  in  any 
two  years.  The  best  profits  and  the  most  satisfac- 
tory conditions  of  business  are  always  attained  when 
the  wages  of  the  workman  are  the  highest.  Both  are 
steadily  rising,  and  will  continue  to  rise  in  this  coun- 
try, in  spite  of  all  the  obstructions  which  misguided 
men  may  place  in  the  way. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says,  "  There  is  no  limit  to  produc- 
tion, to  which  wages  must  correspond."  What  does 
he  mean  ?  What  is  the  source  of  wages  if  it  is  not 
the  product  of  labor  ?  Do  we  derive  wages  or  profits 
from  anything  except  the  joint  product  of  capital 
and  labor  ?  I  should  be  glad  to  have  him  teach  me 
how  to  get  my  wages  in  any  other  way  than  by  way 
of  work.  He  says,  "If  wages  increase,  production 
must  also  increase."  If  he  will  turn  that  sentence 
right  end  foremost  I  will  agree  with  him.  When 
production  increases  wages  must  also  increase,  for 
the  reason  that  labor,  in  my  judgment,  now  receives 
and  always  will  receive  at  least  ninety  per  cent,  of 


94 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


all  that  is  produced.  The  two  things  go  together, 
and  cannot  be  set  off  one  acfainst  the  other. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  makes  a  curious  quotation,  and  I 
suppose  he  imputes  the  words  to  me  :  "  Take  care  of 
the  rich,  and  the  rich  will  take  care  of  the  poor."  I 
never  said  so  ;  I  think  the  rich  will  take  care  of  them- 
selves. All  that  I  suggest  is,  that  the  poor  shall  be- 
come as  competent  to  take  care  of  themselves  as  the 
rich  are  ;  this  they  can  only  accomplish,  in  my  judg- 
ment, by  developing  their  own  capacity,  each  man  for 
himself,  so  that  his  time  and  his  work  shall  become 
worth  more  than  it  now  is.  When  he  has  accom- 
plished this  he  will  be  as  able  to  take  care  of  himself 
as  the  richest  man  in  the  community. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says  that  "  the  lawyers,  the  par- 
sons, and  the  political  economists  constitute  them- 
selves the  nursery-maids  of  labor,  and  receive  their 
fees  for  tending  them."  If  that  be  true,  then  labor  is 
an  infant,  and  it  pays  such  fees  for  lack  of  knowledge 
how  to  take  care  of  itself.  I  think  the  statement  is 
an  insult  to-  labor. 

In  reference  to  my  cotton  figures  Mr.  Chamberlin 
says,  "  Before  the  multiplication  or  division  card  can 
reach  him  the  conditions  are  changed  ;  "  and  that 
"  no  Joshua  of  the  cotton  interest  can  make  the  sun 
and  moon  of  wages  and  of  production  stand  still." 
He  is  perfectly  right.  They  do  change.  They  have 
changed.  They  are  changing — constantly  for  the 
better — lower  prices  to  the  consumer  of  cotton  fab- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


95 


rics  ;  higher  wages  to  the  operative  who  makes  them; 
and  less  and  less  margin  of  profit  to  the  owner  who 
runs  the  mill ;  easier  work  for  the  workmen  ;  harder 
work  for  the  capitalists.  If  you  can  spare  the  capi- 
talist, if  you  can  do  without  him,  why  don't  you  ? 
If  there  is  a  contest,  as  Mr.  Chamberlin  says,  if 
"over  there  is  capital  and  here  is  labor,"  and  if  life 
is  a  contest  between  these  two  forces,  then  why  don't 
you  end  the  contest?  It  lies  with  you.  Unless 
capital  serves  you,  you  need  not  serve  capital;  it  has 
no  power  except  it  be  combined  with  intelligent 
labor  ;  it  is  inert ;  it  is  dead  ;  it  can  only  serve  you 
when  you  serve  it ;  and  you  need  only  serve  it  so 
long  as  it  serves  you. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  tells  us  that  "  labor  has  been 
stretching  out  its  hand  for  this  margin  of  profit  ever 
since  the  first  slave-driver  stole  it."  That  is  true  ; 
but  we  have  abolished  the  slave-drivers.  There  are 
none.  But  when  you  tell  me  that  the  margin  of 
profit  is  the  sole  creation  of  labor,  then  I  say  that 
you  fail  to  comprehend  the  very  alphabet  of  eco- 
nomic science.  If  you  can  spare  the  capitalist,  spare 
him.  He  who  has  now  the  power  to  accumulate 
the  capital  and  to  put  it  to  use  for  your  benefit  can, 
when  you  spare  his  services,  take  care  of  himself. 
If  you  can  take  care  of  yourselves  without  him,  why 
don't  you  do  it  ?  Mr.  Chamberlin  attempts  to  sus- 
tain his  position  by  making  the  common  blunder 
which  he  shares  even  with  many  members  of  Con- 


^6  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

gress  who  ought  to  know  better,  by  trying  to  find 
out  what  were  the  profits  of  manufacturing  in  i8So, 
from  the  figures  of  the  Census.  For  such  a  purpose 
the  figures  of  the  Census  are  mere  rubbish.  If  the 
questions  had  been  put  in  such  a  way  that  the  profits 
of  the  different  arts  investiorated  would  have  been 
disclosed,  manufacturers  would  either  have  returned 
no  answer  whatever  or  would  not  have  given  correct 
and  complete  answers.  The  taking  of  the  Census 
has  no  such  purpose,  and  it  would  be  impossible  to 
carry  it  out  if  it  had.  All  that  you  have  in  the  Cen- 
sus— and  I  know  of  what  I  speak,  for  I  framed  the 
forms  of  many  of  the  questions,  especially  in  the 
department  of  which  I  took  the  Census  myself — I 
say  that  all  you  have  in  the  Census  which  is  of  value 
and  which  can  be  made  use  of  with  safety,  is  the 
gross  value  of  manufacturing  products  ;  the  cost  of 
the  materials ;  the  number  of  employes,  and  the  sum 
of  their  wages  ;  but  when  you  undertake  to  arrive 
at  profits  by  deducting  the  cost  of  materials  and  the 
sum  of  the  wages,  you  are  all  at  sea,  because  no  state- 
ment was  asked  and  no  answer  was  given  as  to  the 
cost  of  depreciation,  the  cost  of  insurance,  of  taxes, 
of  administration,  of  interest,  of  loss  by  bad  debts, 
of  distribution  by  railway,  or  of  many  other  elements 
which  used  up  the  greater  part  of  the  forty-eight  and 
one-half  per  cent,  which  Mr.  Chamberlin  assigns  to 
the  profits  of  capital.  The  year  1880  was  a  very 
prosperous  year,  and  the  capital  invested  in  manu- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


97 


facturing,  mechanic,  and  mining  arts  in  that  year 
probably  did  earn  from  six  to  ten  per  cent.,  but  on 
the  average  not  more  than  ten,  and  probably  not  as 
much. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says,  "  Turn  to  the  chart ;  labor  is 
in  red  ;  it  is  the  heart's  blood  ;  without  it  the  human 
frame  is  a  ghastly  corpse."  He  is  right.  But  what 
is  the  blood  without  the  substance  of  the  brain  and 
the  muscle  of  the  heart,  to  give  it  force  and  direction, 
so  that  it  shall  perfect  its  work  ?  If  labor  is  the  blood, 
capital  is  the  muscle  of  the  heart ;  neither  of  any  use, 
neither  capable  of  sustaining  life  without  the  other. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says,  that  "  during  the  strike  at 
Armour's  Packing  House,  at  Chicago,  Armour's  pro- 
fits were  less."  I  doubt  it.  It  may  be  true  ;  but 
most  of  the  strikes  which  I  have  studied  and  watched 
have  brought  to  the  owners  of  capital  more  profit 
than  they  would  otherwise  have  obtained.  When 
the  strike  makes  goods  scarce,  while  it  may  bank- 
rupt one  man,  ten  others  get  a  higher  price  for  the 
stock  they  had  on  hand,  and  the  consumers  pay  what 
the  strikers  lose,  in  almost  all  cases. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  parades  the  figures  of  the  unem- 
ployed. He  refers  to  the  statement  that  one  or  two 
years  ago  a  million  men  were  said  to  be  out  of  work, 
and  that  In  the  ofreat  cities  thousands  and  thousands 
of  starving  men,  women,  and  children  were  huddled 
together  in  misery. 

They  were  bad  times,  but  the  number  of  the  un- 


98 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


employed  was  greatly  exaggerated.  Did  any  one 
starve  ?  1  don't  believe  it.  If  any  one  starves  in 
this  city  it  is  because  he  is  too  proud  to  make  his 
wants  known.  But  workmen  don't  ask  for  charity  ; 
they  are  not  to  be  raised  from  want  in  this  way.  I 
will,  however,  tell  you,  on  the  authority  of  the  Rev. 
E.  E.  Hale,  that  in  that  worst  winter  when  the 
greatest  number  were  said  to  be  without  employ- 
ment in  the  city  of  Boston,  with  a  population  then 
numbering  nearly  400,000,  there  was  a  great  deal 
of  snow,  and  hundreds  of  men  were  called  for  to  keep 
the  streets  clear  ;  the  city  employed  one  large  force, 
the  horse-railways  another,  and  the  Industrial  Union 
a  third  force  ;  and  when  they  had  succeeded  in  get- 
ting the  work  of  3,200  men,  out  of  nearly  400,000 
people,  the  pump  sucked ;  there  were  no  more  idle 
men  who  were  willinof  to  do  the  work  that  was  wait- 
ing  to  be  done.  How  is  it  to-day  ?  Trade  is  active  ; 
there  is  work  waiting  to  be  done  by  every  man, 
woman,  and  child  who  is  willing  to  accept  the  con- 
ditions ;  work  which  will  sustain  life,  and  which,  if 
it  will  not  lead  to  wealth,  will  save  men  and  women 
from  want,  provided  they  know  how  to  make  use  of 
what  they  earn. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  refers  to  the  reformatories  and 
prisons  of  Boston  and  of  New  York,  covering  our 
islands  with  their  laro^e  buildincrs.  It  is  a  sad  fact 
that  these  pleasant  islands  are  thus  covered.  But 
who  are  the   inmates  ?     Are  they  native  poor,  are 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


99 


they  the  product  of  a  free  country  ?  Are  they  the 
children  who  have  been  bred  in  our  schools  ?  Are 
they  not  mainly  those  who  have  come  to  our  shores 
in  adult  life  and  who  are  incapable  of  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  opportunity  which  has  been  given  them 
here  to  do  work  to  sustain  themselves,  or  too  weak 
to  resist  the  temptation  to  intemperance  and  vice 
when  they  come  here  ? 

Mr.  Chamberlin  refers  to  the  ideal  factory  of  which 
I  have  given  you  the  picture,  and  calls  for  the  rent. 
He  wants  to  know  where  the  rent  is.  There  is  no 
rent.  There  is  land  free  to  you  and  free  to  me  if 
we  want  to  build  a  factory,  without  charge  for  rent, 
almost  anywhere.  He  says  that  in  the  factory  I 
have  not  considered  the  rent  of  the  tenement-houses. 
He  is  mistaken.  The  factory  tenement-houses  are 
not  considered  a  source  of  profit  or  rent.  I  do  not 
think  the  method  is  exactly  a  true  one,  but  it  is  rare 
indeed  that  factory  boarding-houses  pay  any  rent 
more  than  sufficient  to  keep  them  in  repair  and  up 
to  the  standard  of  a  comfortable  and  wholesome  life. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  refers  to  the  alleged  profits  on 
land.  Time  will  not  suffice  to  discuss  this  question  ; 
I  think,  however,  that  he  and  Mr.  George  have  con- 
fused matters  in  a  way  which  is  not  hopeful,  and 
they  have  also  appeared  to  me  to  confuse  what  is 
known  as  the  "  economic  rent"  of  agricultural  land 
with  the  rent  which  is  paid  for  city  warehouses  when 
the  premises  are  hired.     I  will  only  say  here  that 


100  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

this  element  is,  in  my  judgment,  very  much  exag- 
gerated. I  have  investigated  the  ratio  or  propor- 
tion which  the  rent  of  the  great  shops  bears  to  their 
sales  ;  it  is  considerably  less  than  one  per  cent,  on 
the  annual  amount.  In  other  words,  the  element  of 
rent  which  enters  into  the  cost  of  the  cloth  bouo^ht 
of  the  retail  dealer  is  very  much  less  than  one  dol- 
lar in  each  one  hundred  dollars'  worth  of  cloth  sold 
or  purchased. 

Rent  may  not  be  justified  because  it  is  small,  only 
because  it  is  right.  I  cannot  discuss  that  question 
here  ;  it  requires  too  much  time. 

He  then  asks,  what  business  have  the  men  of  capi- 
tal to  take  advantao-e  of  the  work  of  the  inventors 
and  men  of  science  ?  He  says  truly  that  the  Pul- 
tons and  Stevensons  worked  for  mankind.  So  did 
Faraday  and  others  who  did  not  themselves  make 
fortunes  out  of  their  inventions.  But  of  what  use 
would  their  inventions  have  been  had  not  men  capa- 
ble of  directing  these  forces  and  of  converting  them 
into  capital  applied  them  ?  Who  would  have  bene- 
fited by  Stevenson  if  capital  had  not  leveled  the 
hills,  opened  the  ways,  and  laid  the  railroads  ?  Could 
labor  have  done  this  by  itself?  Would  it  not  have 
been  a  hopeless  task  to  cover  this  country  like  a 
gridiron  with  railroads,  except  labor  had  served  cap- 
ital as  capital  had  served  labor  in  doing  the  work? 
Mr.  Chamberlin  asks  :  "  How  can  you  infer  all 
profits  on  all  work  throughout  the   country  on   all 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  iqi 

branches  of  industry  from  the  figures  of  a  cotton 
mill  ?  "  I  have  said  in  my  address  that  you  could 
not.  The  capital  in  a  cotton  mill  is  so  much  greater 
than  that  required  in  almost  any  other  industry  that 
the  sum  assigned  to  profit  must  be  also  greater.  The 
average  profit  derived  from  all  the  product  of  the 
country  is  far  less  than  I  have  shown  by  the  figures 
of  a  cotton  mill,  because  the  capital  used  is  less  in 
ratio  to  the  product. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says  truly  that  it  is  no  palliation 
of  tyranny  or  wrong  because  profits  are  small ;  and 
that  is  true.  I  do  not  justify  profits  because  they 
are  small,  but  because  they  are  right.  They  will 
not  fall  under  the  futile  attacks  of  Mr.  Chamberlin  or 
others  ;  they  will  fall,  if  at  all,  only  when  proved  to 
be  wrong — proved  to  be  contrary  to  the  natural  law 
or  to  the  higher  law  by  which  we  are  all  controlled. 
When  that  time  comes,  communism  will  have  come. 
Until  then  it  is  rank  communism  of  the  most  offens- 
ive sort  to  affirm  that  profit  is  necessarily  allied  to 
tyranny  and  oppression.  This  will  not  do.  The 
Squires  of  Work  know  better. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  is  in  error  when  he  says  that 
"  the  aggregate  profits  and  the  amount  apportioned 
to  each  member  of  the  capitalistic  class  becomes 
greater  and  Qfreater."  "  The  workino^  class  has  more 
than  it  did  have,  but  less  proportionately,  on  account 
of  the  increasing  discrepancy  in  the  number  of  mem- 
bers of  the  two  classes." 


102  THE  MARGIN-  OF  PROFITS. 

He  has  no  facts  by  which  to  sustain  either  part  of 
this  statement,  and  the  one  part  is  inconsistent  with 
the  other.  The  aggregate  of  profits  at  the  present 
time  is  undoubtedly  greater  than  ever  before,  but  time 
would  not  suffice  even  if  I  had  the  proofs  at  hand 
to  show  how  rapidly  the  number  of  persons  of  mod- 
erate wealth  is  increasing  in  this  country.  Wealth 
itself  is  becoming  more  widely  distributed.  Mr. 
Chamberlin  admits  that  the  working  class  has  more 
than  it  did  have,  but  he  is  entirely  in  error  in  stating 
that  the  wage  class  has  a  less  proportion,  either  be- 
cause of  the  increasing  discrepancy  in  the  number 
of  members  of  the  two  classes,  or  for  any  other 
reason.  The  share  of  the  annual  product  which  is 
now  falling  to  the  workmen,  in  the  strictest  sense,  is 
a  bigger  share  of  a  bigger  product  than  workmen 
have  ever  attained  before  in  this  or  in  any  other 
country. 

Reference  may  again  be  made  to  the  few  proofs 
already  given  out  of  the  many  which  I  could  have 
given  to  sustain  this  statement.  I  commend  the 
facts  to  you,  all  of  you,  who  have  sufficient  interest 
to  try  to  learn  what  the  facts  are.  Don't  take  my  say- 
so  ;  don't  take  Mr.  Chamberlin's  say-so  ;  get  at  the 
facts  of  life  for  yourselves.  I  never  had  much  time 
for  books.  I  never  read  many  books  on  this  sub- 
ject. I  have  been  obliged  to  work  too  hard  to  get 
my  own  living  ;  but  I  have  studied  the  facts,  and  with 
the  leisure  which  I  have  obtained  I  am  now  makinn- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


103 


use  of  the  books.  The  reports  of  the  Bureaus  of 
Labor  of  the  several  States,  the  investigations  of 
Colonel  Wright,  and  many  other  sources  of  informa- 
tion are  now  open  to  any  one  who  knows  how  to 
use  them.  Better  than  all,  consult  your  own  experi- 
ence, and  by  that  see  who  is  right  and  who  is  wrong 
in  this  discussion. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  refers  to  the  bad  condition  of  the 
factory  operatives  as  they  were  fifty  years  ago  in 
Great  Britain.  He  brings  up  the  appalling  picture 
of  the  abuse  of  children  and  of  women  which  Lord 
Ashley  found  in  the  factories  when  he  put  an  end  to 
such  abuses.  Was  it  the  abuse  of  labor  by  capital  .'* 
Was  it  not  the  abuse  of  working  men  and  women 
under  a  system  of  privilege  in  a  country  in  which  the 
workmen  had  no  votes  ?  Will  it  not  merely  mislead 
you,  if  you  consider  this  reference  to  ancient  history 
now  ?  Where  can  you  find  such  conditions  in  mod- 
ern times  or  in  this  country?  If  you  can  find  them, 
if  there  is  such  abuse,  then,  in  God's  name,  I  will 
join  with  him  in  almost  any  method  which  may  put 
a  stop  to  it.  Such  legislative  interference  may  have 
been  necessary  under  the  conditions  of  English  gov- 
ernment by  privilege  and  not  by  right,  as  it  was  fifty 
years  ago,  but  is  not  now.  There  are  no  such  abuses 
in  this  State,  or  in  this  country,  since  slavery  was 
abolished  in  the  Southern  land. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  says  that  he  agrees  with  me  that 
the  only  element  we  all  have  in  common  is  time,  and 


104 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 


that  my  statement  is  true  until  we  dispose  of  our  time. 
But  he  says,  "If  I  sell  myself  I  have  the  privilege 
of  selling  myself  for  twelve  hours'  work  ;  am  I  a  freer 
man  than  if  I  sell  myself  for  only  ten  hours  a  day  ?  " 
Then  why  sell  yourself  at  all  ?  No  one  can  compel 
you  to  do  so.  You  can  control  your  own  time, 
brains,  and  hands  ;  all  I  ask  is  that  you  shall  not 
obstruct  other  men  who  can  do  better  by  selling 
their  time  than  they  can  by  directing  themselves  in 
their  effort  to  do  what  they  please  with  it. 

He  says  truly  that  the  hours  of  labor  have  been 
shortened  ;  he  claims  that  they  have  been  shortened 
by  legislation.  I  cannot  disprove  it ;  but  I  do  not 
believe  legislation  has  had  much  effect.  Laws  when 
not  backed  by  public  opinion  are  of  little  effect,  and 
in  this  case  it  has  been  public  opinion  more  than  law 
which  has  worked  the  change.  When  Mr.  Cham- 
berlin  alleges  that  production  has  increased  because 
the  hours  of  labor  have  thus  been  shortened  by  leg- 
islation, I  differ. 

If  the  necessary  result  of  short  hours  of  work  is  a 
larger  product,  then  why  not  shorten  the  work  yet 
more  ?  Why  stop  at  eight  hours  ?  Why  work  more 
than  six  ?  or  more  than  four  ?  or  more  than  two  ? 
Why  work  at  all  ?  We  must  reverse  that  statement 
to  make  it  true  to  the  facts. 

President  Garfield  told  me  that  he  dated  his  intel- 
lectual life  from  a  lecture  which  he  heard  from  Ralph 
Waldo  Emerson,  delivered  in  the  old  parish  church 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  105 

at  WilHamstown,  during  the  single  year  of  college 
life  which  he  enjoyed.  He  said  that  during  the  lec- 
ture it  seemed  as  if  his  brain  were  on  fire  ;  when  he 
passed  out  of  the  door  and  looked  up  the  side  of  old 
Greylock  Mountain  it  then  seemed  to  him  as  if  the 
mountain  were  on  fire  ;  and  yet,  when  he  tried  to 
recall  what  Mr.  Emerson  had  said,  the  only  sentence 
he  could  remember  was  this  : 

"  Mankind  is  as  lazy  as  it  dares  to  be." 

You  may  believe  this  :  mankind  IS  as  lazy  as  it 
dares  to  be  ;  and  the  hours  of  work  will  be  shortened 
as  fast  and  as  much  as  the  necessary  product  will 
permit. 

It  is  Mr.  Chamberlln  who  puts  the  cart  before  the 
horse.  It  is  the  increased  production  which  has 
made  the  shorter  hours  possible.  So  far  as  I  have 
been  capable  of  observation,  all  the  legislation  for 
controlling  and  limiting  the  work  of  the  adults  has 
tended  rather  to  keep  the  hours  of  labor  longer  than 
they  would  otherwise  have  been.  Doubtless  legislation 
may  have  affected  and  shortened  the  work  of  some 
small  class  ;  but  by  so  much  as  their  hours  have  been 
shortened  has  the  necessary  work  of  other  men  and 
women  been  made  longer. 

Mr.  Chamberlin  tells  us  of  his  friend  White  who 
has  invented  a  stocking  knitter  which  the  manufact- 
urers  will  not  adopt  because  they  prefer  to  use  their 
old  machines  and  keep  the  new  ones  out  of  the 
market.     I   never  heard  of  Mr.  White.     If  he  has 


I06  THE   MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

really  invented  a  better  stocking  machine  than  is  now 
in  use  he  has  only  to  bring-  it  before  the  right  persons 
and  it  will  be  adopted.  If  the  manufacturers  who  now 
choose  to  use  their  old  machines  do  not  take  it,  some 
other  man  will  ;  and  if  it  is  what  Mr.  Chamberlin 
thinks  it  to  be,  the  men  who  hold  on  to  their  old 
machines  will  fail,  and  the  new  men  will  succeed. 

I  have  never  yet  seen  a  true  invention  fail  for  lack 
of  capital,  although  it  is  often  delayed  in  its  adoption 
by  the  incapacity  of  the  inventors  to  make  reasonable 
contracts  with  those  who  have  the  capital  needed  by 
them. 

Lastly  :  reference  is  made  to  the  figures  of  Colonel 
Wright's  reports,  by  which  it  appears  that  wages 
are  hio-her  and  the  hours  of  labor  shorter  in  IMassa- 
chusetts  than  in  some  other  places.  I  have  no 
doubt  that  it  is  so.  There  is  a  greater  diversity 
of  industry  in  Massachusetts  than  in  most  other 
places  ;  the  conditions  are  better  ;  it  is  quite  con- 
sistent with  the  law  of  labor,  to  wit  :  that  in  pro- 
portion to  the  increase  of  capital  and  the  skill  of  the 
workmen  the  wages  are  raised  and  the  cost  of  the 
product  is  reduced,  while  production  is  greatly  in- 
creased. It  would  not,  however,  prove  to  be  true 
that  in  the  same  kind  of  work,  under  identical  con- 
ditions, the  waofes  were  hicrher  on  the  short  hours 
than  on  the  long.  I  do  not  myself  think  it  is  judi- 
cious to  operate  a  modern  factory  more  than  ten 
hours  a  day  ;  but  so  far  as  I  have  been  able  to  com- 


THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS.  iqj 

pare  one  mill  with  another — and  I  have  been  at  the 
same  time  treasurer  of  mills  working  eleven  hours 
and  ten  hours — I  could  not  find  that  eleven  hours' 
work  reduced  the  power  of  the  workman  so  as  to 
impair  either  the  quality  of  his  work  or  its  quantity. 
I  do  not  as^ree  with  Mr.  Chamberlin  that  the  law 
gives  the  employer  any  advantage  over  the  work- 
man. I  do  not  find  in  our  State  legislation  any  such 
disparity.  There  is  too  much  legislation  on  behalf 
of  both.  It  would  be  far  better  that  many  of  the 
meddlesome  acts  were  repealed  than  that  any  more 
should  be  enacted.  He  says  that  "  great  progress 
has  been  made  by  the  organization  of  the  Knights 
of  Labor,  the  Trades-Unions,  and  other  clubs."  I 
fully  agree  in  the  benefit  of  organization  ;  it  brings 
men  together  ;  it  leads  them  to  compare  notes  ;  it 
leads  them  to  study  the  actual  conditions.  What  I 
have  said  throughout  this  evening  is,  ORGANIZE  ; 
but  organize  so  that  each  man  shall  be  free  to  make 
use  of  the  benefit  which  he  may  derive  from  such 
association  with  his  fellow-workmen.  Not  until  this 
is  the  rule  of  your  club  or  your  trades-union  will 
you  attain  the  full  measure  of  the  service  of  such 
organizations. 

Note  B. — In  answer  to  a  question  from  a  gentleman  in  the  audience  who 
asked  Mr.  Atkinson  what  had  been,  in  his  judgment,  the  effect  of  the  strikes 
of  the  last  few  months,  the  speaker  replied, — Neither  the  strikes  nor  the 
organizations  by  which  they  have  been  promoted  have  touched  more  than  a 
fringe  or  a  small  fraction  of  the  great  working  force  of  this  country.  When 
viewed  by  themselves,  each  in  its  own  particular  case,  these  strikes  have 


I08  THE  MARGIN  OF  PROFITS. 

caused  some  disturbance,  and  a  considerable  loss  to  individuals,  especially 
to  the  strikers.  Occasionally  they  have  worked  a  profit  to  the  employers  in 
enabling  them  to  reduce  product,  and  to  sell  their  surplus  stock  of  goods  at 
a  higher  price.  But  in  this,  as  in  all  similar  cases,  the  great  body  of  work- 
ing people  who  are  unorganized,  and  who  belong  to  the  Squires  of  Work, 
carry  on  the  industry  and  the  enterprise  of  the  country  without  much  regard 
to  the  incidents  of  strikes.  Such  will  always  be  the  case.  The  strikes  be- 
come conspicuous  because  they  are  exceptional  ;  they  attract  a  good  deal  of 
attention  ;  but  like  many  other  incidents  of  life  their  importance  is  very 
much  exaggerated.  They  may  be  compared  to  other  exceptional  causes  of 
disturbance  in  business  matters.  I  do  not  intend  to  compare  them  mor- 
ally with  frauds  and  defalcations,  but  they  are  something  like  them.  Fraud 
and  defalcation  often  work  very  great  injury  to  small  numbers  of  people ; 
they  attract  a  great  deal  of  attention  ;  but  as  Mr.  Gladstone  has  so  well 
said,  "  The  trust  reposed  in  and  deserved  by  the  many  creates  the  oppor- 
tunity for  the  fraud  of  the  few."  If  all  men  were  not  fairly  honest  ;  if  all 
men  did  not  really  desire  good  government  ;  if  all  men  did  not  on  the  whole 
keep  faith  with  each  other,  all  trade  and  commerce  would  stop,  and  society 
would  then  be  subjected  to  a  despotism,  or  else  anarchy  would  ensue. 

And  in  the  same  way,  if  any  considerable  disturbance  had  been  caused 
either  by  the  Knights  of  Labor,  or  by  the  strikes,  it  would  have  been  felt  in 
much  greater  measure. 

In  fact,  the  great  work  of  the  country  has  proceeded  with  little  regard  to 
either,  and  the  people  have  continued  to  govern  themselves  according  to 
their  common  habit. 

I  am  glad  to  hear  Mr.  Chamberlin  say  that  the  Labor  associations  are 
independent  of  the  law,  and  that  their  decrees  can  be  no  more  than  requests 
to  their  meml;ers,  who  may  obey  or  not  obey,  as  they  see  fit.  Then  it  is  not 
true  that  men  who  do  not  choose  to  join  these  organizations,  but  who  choose 
to  keep  the  control  of  their  own  time,  and  to  make  their  own  bargains  in 
their  own  way,  are  subjected  to  force  ;  then  they  are  not  scabs ;  then  they 
are  not  considered  enemies  of  labor  ;  then  you  admit  the  truth  ;  they  are  at 
liberty  to  keep  the  control  of  their  own  affairs,  and  you  are  not  at  liberty 
to  obstruct  them,  or  to  stigmatize  them.  I  concur  fully  with  Mr.  Chamber- 
lin. There  is  no  great  power  either  in  statute  laws,  or  in  the  by-laws  of  the 
associations  ;  the  real  power  which  governs  the  people  of  this  country  is  the 
power  of  public  opinion  ;  and  public  opinion  sooner  or  latter  will  utterly 
condemn  every  association,  under  whatever  name,  that  undertakes  to  re- 
.strict  the  individual  liberty  of  adult  men.  When  this  principle  is  recognized 
Labor  will  suffer  no  defeat,  because  there  will  be  no  contest  in  which  it  can 
be  defeated. 


APPENDIX    I. 


In  concluding  the  report  of  this  meeting  and  in  preparing  it 
for  pubUcation,  let  me  say  that  in  my  judgment  there  has  never 
been  a  period  in  the  history  of  the  world  in  which  there  have 
been  so  many  important  new  inventions  or  so  many  applications 
of  previous  inventions,  all  tending  to  human  welfare,  as  in  the 
last  twenty- five  years.  We  have  hardly  begun  to  appreciate  the 
time-saving  which  has  been  brought  about  by  the  railway,  the 
steamship,  and  the  telegraph.  In  other  words,  all  that  we  do  in 
promoting  material  life  is  to  move  something.  We  can  make 
nothing.  We  move  the  soil,  we  move  the  seed,  nature  gives 
the  harvest.  We  move  the  grain,  we  move  the  food  from  the 
producer  to  the  consumer  ;  we  move  the  flour  to  the  oven, 
we  move  the  bread  from  the  oven.  All  life  is  a  conversion 
of  forces ;  progress  consists  mainly  in  overcoming  friction, 
in  hastening  production  and  distribution.  In  the  world 
there  is  always  enough  ;  yet  the  world  is  always  within  a  year 
of  starvation.  The  only  question  is,  where  is  it  and  how  to 
get  it  ? 

When  we  consider  all  that  has  been  accomplished  in  doing 
away  with  friction  in  the  single  matter  of  moving  food  by  the 
railway  and  the  steamship  from  the  producer  to  the  consumer, 
we  shall  find  that  to  Sir  Henry  Bessemer,  perhaps  more  than 
to  any  other  man,  is  to  be  attributed  the  vast  changes  in  the 
social  condition  of  Great  Britain.  Who  else  has  done  so 
much  to  knock  the  bottom  out  of  English  rents  and  to  make  a 


no  APPENDIX  I. 

profound  change  imperative  in  the  whole  construction  of  Eng- 
lish society  ?  How  ?  By  increasing  the  abundance  of  food  for 
the  EngHsh  people. 

The  first  effect  of  all  great  changes,  and  in  the  application 
of  all  great  inventions  whether  patented  or  not,  is  to  benefit 
and  increase  the  fortune  of  the  few  before  this  benefit  is  dis- 
tributed among  the  many.     During  the  last  twenty-five  years 
many  such  causes  of  great  fortune  to  the  few  without  added 
cost  to  the  many  have  been  paramount  but  beneficent   influ- 
ences affecting  society,  especially  in  this  country.     Another  but 
a  malignant  instrument  of  false  distribution  by  which  the  rich 
have  been  made  richer  at  the  cost  of  the  poor,  has  been  the 
legal-tender   note  or  greenback,  so-called, — the    mock    money 
which  has  been  substituted  by  force  of   law  for  true    money, 
as  a  measure  of  the  transactions  of  the  people.     Most  of  these 
recent  great  causes  of  grave  disparity  in  the  conditions  of  men, 
both  beneficent  and  maleficent,  have  substantially    spent  their 
force.     Can  there  be  a  doubt  that  the  benefit  of  the  great  in- 
ventions to  which  I  have  referred   is  now  being  distributed  ? 
The  period  which  has  elapsed  since   1873    has   been  called  a 
period  of  depression.      Is  this  true  ?     During  this  whole  period, 
not  only  since   1873,  but  since  1S65,  the  facts  are  that,  while 
prices  of  the  necessaries  of  life  have  diminished  and  while  the 
cost  of  production  has  been  reduced,  the  wages  or  earnings  of 
labor,  subject  to  temporary  fluctuations,  have  been  steadily  in- 
creased.    Those  who  have  suffered   have  been  the  capitalists 
who  could  not  speedily   adjust   themselves   to    the   new    con- 
ditions, and  common  laborers  or  the  workmen  in  a  few  Hmited 
and  special  arts,  who,  for  a  time,  have  been  unable  to  find  em- 
ployment because    of   the   profound  changes  which  are  being 
worked  in  the  conditions  of  society  and  the  methods  of  com- 
merce. 

Is  it  not  true  that  throughout  this  period  there  has  been  a 
steady  and  constant  conversion  of  an  increasing  proportion  of 
each  year's  product  from  capital  to  labor  ?     Of  this  I  find  evi- 


APPENDIX  I.  Ill 

dence  in  every  investigation  of  every  art  that  I  have  yet 
analyzed.  The  results  of  these  analyses  will  appear  in  due 
season.  What  then  must  be  the  conclusion  ?  It  must  be  this  : 
if  we  are  at  or  near  the  turning-point  when  great  changes 
which  have  for  twenty-five  years  inured  to  the  benefit  of  the 
few  are  about  to  be  converted  to  the  benefit  of  the  many, — 
these  being  mainly  time-saving  changes  as  well  as  labor-saving, 
— then  it  follows  of  necessity  that  we  are  not  far  away  from  a 
period  when,  either  with  or  without  legislation,  but,  as  I  my- 
self believe,  in  spite  of  meddlesome  legislation,  the  arduous 
struggle  for  life  will  be  greatly  relieved,  both  in  the  time 
which  will  be  necessary  to  give,  and  in  the  intensity  of  the  work 
which  it  will  be  necessary  to  apply  thereto. 

Among  the  many  comments  upon  this  Address  which  have 
come  to  the  writer  since  it  v/as  given,  there  is  perhaps  only  one 
on  which  a  word  may  be  said.  The  editor  of  the  Christian 
Union  remarks,  "  The  author  does  not  deal  with  the  profounder 
aspects  of  the  labor  question,  either  economic  or  moral.  He 
does  not  even  recognize  them."  To  this  it  might  be  replied, 
that  in  a  lecture  of  an  hour  it  would  be  somewhat  difficult  to 
cover  all  the  aspects  of  the  labor  question.  But  the  author  has 
a  good  precedent  for  omitting  to  treat  the  moral  side  of  this 
question  in  connection  with  the  economic.  Adam  Smith  was 
not  only  the  author  of  the  "  Wealth  of  Nations,"  but  also  of  a 
treatise  on  "Moral  Philosophy."  He  carefully  kept  each  line 
of  thought  and  of  argument  separate  and  distinct ;  but  at  the 
end  he  brought  the  result  of  the  true  consideration  of  both 
aspects  of  life  to  the  same  necessary  conclusion. 

When  the  astronomer  turns  his  telescope  toward  the  stars 
he  does  not  give  his  imagination  free  play  while  treating  the 
mathematics  of  the  science  of  astronomy.  When  the  poet  turns 
his  eye  in  the  same  direction,  he  thinks  little  of  the  mathe- 
matics. But  to  the  man  who  can  comprehend  something  of 
both  aspects  it  is  only  necessary  to  recall  the  sonnet  of  Blanco 
White— 


112  APPENDIX  I. 

Mysterious  Night !  when  our  first  parent  knew 

Thee  from  report  divine,  and  heard  thy  name, 

Did  he  not  tremble  for  this  lovely  frame, 
This  glorious  canopy  of  light  and  blue  ? 
Yet  'neath  a  curtain  of  translucent  dew. 

Bathed  in  the  rays  of  the  great  setting  flame, 

Hesperus  with  the  host  of  heaven  came. 
And  lo  !  creation  widened  in  man's  view. 

Who  could  have  thought  such  darkness  lay  concealed 
Within  thy  beams,  O  Sun  !  or  who  could  find, 

Whilst  fly,  and  leaf,  and  insect  stood  revealed, 
That  to  such  countless  orbs  thou  mad'st  us  blind  ? 

Why  do  we,  then,  shun  death  with  anxious  strife  ? 

If  light  can  thus  deceive,  wherefore  not  life  ? 

The  writer  may  remind  those  whose  sentiment  is  stronger 
than  their  insight,  that  Ufe  as  they  view  it  may  deceive  them, 
even  as  the  light  of  economic  science  may  mislead  him  who 
does  not  temper  it  with  charity  for  the  weakness  of  men  and 
women  alike. 

The  fault  of  many  critics  is  their  failure  to  consider  the 
limits  within  which  a  specific  piece  of  work  must  be  done. 
The  fault  of  many  of  those  who  sympathize  with  "labor-re- 
formers," so-called,  is  the  same.  This  fault  especially  affects 
clergymen.  They  are  so  accustomed  to  preach  charity  that 
they  fail  to  see  that  charity  covers  a  multitude  of  sins,  especially 
economic  sins. 

There  is  nothing  more  dangerous  to  the  student  of  these 
questions  than  to  let  either  his  sentiment,  his  imagination,  or  his 
charity  run  away  with  him,  lest  he  should  do  more  harm  than 
good  by  his  attempt  to  relieve  poverty. 

In  this  Address  to  Workingmen,  the  effort  of  the  writer  was 
to  present  the  greatest  number  of  hard  facts  within  the  limit  of 
sixty  minutes.  In  order  to  do  this  most  effectually  he  tried  an 
experiment  in  the  utmost  condensation  of  the  language  used. 
The  effort  was  not  such  as  has  been  imputed  to  him  in  one  in- 
stance, that  of  trying  to  write  down  to  the  level  of  an  audience 


APPENDIX  I. 


"3 


assumed  by  him  to  be  unintelligent.  He  long  since  learned 
that  there  is  but  little  difference  in  the  intelligence  of  au- 
diences, to  whatever  class  they  belong.  Each  can  only  be  held 
if  the  man  who  speaks  gives  them  the  best  he  has  in  him.  But 
it  has  been  the  fault  of  almost  all  economic  discussion,  so  far 
as  workmen  are  concerned,  that  the  questions  at  issue  have 
been  treated  rather  in  scientific  terminology  than  in  the  com- 
mon speech  of  every-day  life.  In  this  Address  the  writer  en- 
deavored to  bring  a  somewhat  difficult  and  abstruse  subject 
into  the  words  of  common  life. 


APPENDIX  II. 


ECONOMY  IN  DOMESTIC   COOKERY. 

Boston,  May  3,  1887. 
To  THE  Editors  of  the  American  Architect  : 

Dear  Sirs  : — I  am  constrained  to  believe  that  the  improve- 
ments which  I  have  made  in  cooking  apparatus  which  will  ulti- 
mately prove  most  beneficial  to  people  of  small  means  rather 
than  to  others,  may  come  into  use  sooner  among  prosperous 
persons  than  among  the  poor  ;  they  may  then  gradually  find 
their  way  down  to  the  points  where  they  will  do  the  most 
good.  I  think  that  I  myself  did  not  realize  the  full  meaning 
of  these  improvements  until  I  invited  my  Whist  Club  to  an 
"  Aladdin  "  Cooker  dinner  party  on  Saturday  last.  I  may  ven- 
ture to  give  the  bill  of  fare,  which  was  promptly  served  and 
was  very  much  approved. 

•BROOKLINEWHISTCLUB- 


DINNER  AUALADPIN 

•THREE-LAnPPOWER-  W| 1 

•APRIL-30- 1887-       1^1 j 

•A\ENU- 


"  Mon  est  pnimws,   c\j\  non  est  corfius 

JUVENAL— TINKERED   BY   W.  EVERETT. 

OYSTERS.  [They  need  no  lamp.] 

"  The  man  had  sure  a  palate  cover'd  o'er 
With  brass  or  steel,  that  on  the  rocky  shore 
First  broke  the  oozy  oyster's  pearly  coat, 
And  risked  the  living  morsel  down  his  throat." 


APPENDIX  II.  lie 

SOUP.  Skeleton  du  Dindon. 

"  Tom  Thumb  had  a  little  sup, 

But  Tomalin  scarce  kissed  the  cup." 

FISH.  Halibut  a  la  crime. 

"  Once  some  few  hours,  ere  break  of  day, 
As  in  their  hut  our  fishers  lay. 
The  one  awaked  and  waked  his  neighbor, 
That  both  might  ply  their  daily  labor." 

ROAST,  Beefau  naturel 

"  What  better  yet  than  this  ?  a  bullchin  two  years  old, 
A  curled  pate  calf  it  is,  and  oft  could  have  been  sold." 

SUPREME.  Leg  of  Mutto7t. 

"  Is  wool  thy  care  ?     Let  not  thy  cattle  go 
Where  bushes  are,  where  burrs  and  thistles  grow  : 
Nor  in  too  rank  a  pasture  let  them  feed. 
Then  of  the  purest  white  select  thy  breed." 

GAME.  Grouse,  Mushroom  Sauce. 

"  Full  many  a  fat  partridge  had  in  mewe, 
And  many  a  breme  and  many  a  luce  in  stew." 

VEGETABLES.     Potatoes,  Macaroni,  Steamed  Apples. 
Beets,  Onions,  Corn,  String-Beans. 

"  To  satisfy  the  sharp  desire  I  had 

of  tasting  those  fair  apples,  I  resolved  not  to  defer." 

DESSERT.  Pan-Dowdy,  Aladdin  Cake  and  Bread. 

"  Where  in  nice  balance,  truth  with  gold  she  weighs, 
And  soHd  pudding  against  empty  praise." 

FRUIT. 

"  We  can  now  spare 

The  splendor  of  your  lamps." 

The  several  dishes  which  were  served  on  this  occasion  were 
prepared  in  the  kitchen  without  any  other  instruction  than  a 
memorandum  from  myself  as  to  the  time  to  be  given  to 
each  dish ;  they  were  cooked  without  any  special  super- 
vision except  that  of  two  excellent  women  of  average  intelli- 
gence in  our  service — the  work  was  done  partly  in  the  pantry 
and  partly  in  the  dining-room  without  any  odor  of  cooking  of 


Il6  APPENDIX  11, 

any  objectionable  sort,  and  without  any  heat  more  than  that 
developed  by  a  common  kerosene  lamp ;  the  expenditure  of  fuel 
did  not  exceed  two  quarts  of  kerosene  oil — I  think  not  as  much, 
worth  five  or  six  cents  ;  perhaps  worth  less  if  oil  is  bought  by 
the  barrel. 

The  quantities  of  food  were  substantially  as  follows  : 

10  pounds  of  sirloin  of  beef, 
lo      "  leg  of  mutton. 

4       "  halibut. 

4  grouse. 
4  pounds  fish. 

A  large  apple  pudding. 
3  loaves  of  bread,  full  size — the  customary  family  loaf. 
3  loaves  of  cake. 
Sundry  vegetables  not  measured. 

Suffice  it  that  the  quality  was  indicated  by  the  remark  of  an 
English  friend  who  dined  with  us,  that  "  the  mutton  was  equal 
to  the  four-year-old  grass-fed  mutton  of  England,  and  was  the 
only  leg  of  mutton  that  he  had  eaten  in  this  country  which 
approached  that  kind  in  its  excellence." 

The  number  of  persons  who  partook  of  this  dinner  in  the 
household  was  sixteen  ;  what  remained  served  for  the  dinner  of 
twelve  people  on  the  next  day. 

The  two  devices  are  : 

I.  The  "  Aladdin  "  Cooker  in  which  the  food  to  be  cooked 
is  first  placed  in  porcelain  jars  or  pots,  either  with  or  without 
water  or  other  liquid,  and  seasoned  or  not,  according  to  taste. 
These  jars  are  covered  substantially  air-tight,  and  are  immersed 
in  water  by  the  circulation  of  which  the  heat  is  imparted.  The 
diagram'  will  carry  its  own  instructions. 

'A,  one-half  to  one  inch  pine  ;  B,  one  to  one  and  one-half  inch  sawdust  ; 
C,  copper  lining  ;  D,  copper  cover  ;  E,  copper  duct  and  cylinder,  in  which 
water  circulates,  heated  by  F  lamp  ;  G,  tin  guard  to  prevent  radiation  and 
to  protect  wood  from  heat  ;  I,  faucet ;  H,  one  or  more  pots,  jars,  or  tin 
pails  ;  W,  water  in  circulation  outside  the  pot  or  jars  ;  W,  water  level. 


APPENDIX  II, 


117 


The  improved  "  Aladdin,"  as  now  made  by  Mr.  A.  W.  West- 
gate,  of  Mattapoisett,  is  two  stories  high.  For  the  dinner-party 
named  the  leg  of  mutton  was  placed  in  a  large  porcelain  pot 
in  the  lower  part  of  the  apparatus.  A  lamp  was  used  of 
sufficient  capacity  to  cause  the  water  to  boil,  which  caused  the 
meat  to  simmer  slowly  in  its  own  juice.  The  mutton  was  sim- 
mered four  hours.  One  hour  before  serving,  jars  containing 
vegetables  were  placed  in  the  upper  story,  Avhere  they  were 
cooked  by  steam.  One  large  cooker  was  thus  used  ;  a  small, 
one-story  cooker  for  the  grouse. 

The  "Aladdin"  Oven,  so-called,  is  an  oven  in  which  the  heat 
is  imparted  directly  from  the  lamp  to  a  space  between  an  outer 
oven,  the  walls  of  which  are  filled  with  a  non-conducting  mate- 
rial, and  the  inner  oven,  made  of  sheet-iron  or  sheet-copper. 
The  size  of  the  oven  which  I  used  was  substantially  like  that 
indicated  in  the  inclosed  diagram.  I  have  made  such  changes 
in  the  arrangement  in  the  diagram  as  will  probably  make  this 
a  better  oven  than  the  one  which  I  used.  In  the  hot-air  oven 
three  loaves  of  bread  and  three  loaves  of  cake  were  baked  in 
the  morning.  The  large  apple  pudding,  known  as  a  "  pan- 
dowdy," was  also  put  in  in  the  morning.  The  bread  and  cake 
were  taken  out  when  fully  baked,  the  pudding  being  left  in. 
Four  hours  before  dinner  the  sirloin  of  beef  was  put  in  to  be 
roasted ;  and  at  the  proper  time  before  serving,  vegetables 
and  macaroni  were  baked  in  this  oven. 

The  lamp  used  with  the  "  Aladdin  "  Cooker  was  the  common 
"  entry  lamp  "  which  is  commonly  used  to  light  the  hall,  fitted 
with  what  is  known  as  the  "  Sun  "  burner.  The  lamp  used 
with  the  dry  Oven  was  a  lamp  commonly  used  with  kerosene 
stoves,  with  a  wick  six  inches  wide.  About  one  quart  of  oil 
was  used  during  the  day  ;  a  little  more  the  night  before  in  pre- 
paring the  soup.  The  soup  was  prepared  in  the  "  Aladdin  " 
Cooker  the  night  before  ;  the  carcass  of  a  turkey  which  had 
been  roasted  in  the  dry  oven  for  the  previous  dinner  was  placed 
in  a  jar  and  simmered  all  night. 


Ii8 


APPENDIX  II. 


These  are  certainly  somewhat  remarkable  results.    The  secret, 


of  course,  is  in  the  non- 
heat-conducting  wall 
of  each  cooker,  that  of 
the  so-called  *'  Alad- 
din "  Cooker  being 
pine  wood  and  saw- 
dust two  inches  thick ; 
that  of  the  "  Aladdin  " 
dry  Oven  being  two 
sheets  of  galvanized 
sheet  iron  with  an 
interspace  of  two 
^^-^ , 


I  Pot  or  4  cJarj. 
The  inside  of  cooker 
may  ha  io"«  >?'  or  15' 
by  10  inches  d««p  or 
mora  to  tales  in 
aa  many  jari  or  pots 
as  moy  be  usecj  •  • 

H 


l^^mmwi/mwMm^^^ 


mi 


inches  filled  with  carbonate  of  magne- 
sia. In  the  oven  which  I  used  the  in- 
terspace was  only  one  and  one-half 
inches,  and  it  was  not  completely  filled  ; 
I  therefore  wasted  a  good  deal  of  heat. 

We  find  that  meat  cooked  rather 
slowly  at  300"^  Fahrenheit  is  in  the  best 
condition.  We  find  that  bread  baked  slowly  at  300°  Fahren- 
heit is  very  much  better,  has  more  flavor,  is  sweeter  and  lighter 
than  when  the  same  dough  is  baked  in  the  ordinary  oven  at  a 
much  greater  degree  of  heat. 

The  general  verdict  in  regard  to  the  food  prepared  in  these 
two  ovens  is,  that  it  is  more  juicy,  has  a  better  flavor,  and  is  in 
every  way  better  than  when  cooked  in  the  ordinary  way.  This 
is  especially  true  of  game  and  birds,  simmered  slowly. 


APPENDIX  II. 


119 


I  have  made  a  small  addition  to  the  kitchen  of  my  summer 
house  by  constructing  a  small  room  in  which  there  is  a  brick 
table,  on  one  end  of  which  will  be  built  a  broiler  or  grill  to  be 
worked  with  charcoal  ;  at  the  other  end  a  place  for  two  cook- 
ers. I  can  see  no  reason  for  making  use  of  the  cooking  stove 
during  the  ensuing  summer  unless  it  may  be  occasionally  for 
heating  an  extra  quan- 
tity of  water.  It  is 
my  intention  to  alter 
my  winter  kitchen  in 
Brookline  by  adding 
thereto  a  suitable  place 
for  this  apparatus,  de- 
pending upon  the  fur- 
nace to  keep  the  kitch- 
en warm. 

The  attention  re- 
quired by  this  appara- 
tus after  the  food  has 

been  prepared  and  placed  in  it,  is  only  that  needed 
to  take  the  dishes  out  at  the  proper  time  ;  while  in 
the  ovens  absolutely  no  attention  is  called  for. 

I  fear  that  your  readers  may  consider  this  state- 
ment somewhat  visionary.  I  have  one  of  the 
"Aladdin"  Cookers  at  my  office.  No.  31  Milk  Street;  and 
any  architect  who  desires  to  see  the  dry  Oven  may  call  at  my 
house  in  Brookline  during  the  present  month,  where  I  shall  be 
on  almost  any  day  between  five  and  seven  o'clock  ;  or  if  I  am 
absent  some  one   will  show  the  apparatus. 

I  believe  this  apparatus  has  great  use ;  that  it  will  promote 
economy  and  prevent  dyspepsia. 

I  have  stated  to  some  of  my  friends  that  the  epitaph  which 
may  be  placed  on  my  monument  will  be  that  "  He  taught  the 
American  people  how  to  stew." 

I  trust  that  these  statements  may  interest  your  readers  and 


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120  APPENDIX  II. 

may  lead  to  improvements  in  cooking  apparatus  with  a  view  to 
saving  heat  by  which  so  many  kitchens  are  made  intolera- 
ble, especially  in  the  summer. 

I  can  see  no  reason  why  the  devices  adopted  in  these  two 
movable  ovens  should  not  be  applied  to  permanent  ovens  built 
into  the  house  and  so  prepared  that  ordinary  lamps  may  be 
used  in  connection  with  them,  in  place  of  the  wasteful  con- 
sumption of  coal  now  so  much  to  be  deplored.  If  such  per- 
manent ovens  were  thus  constructed  in  connection  with  the 
chimneys  of  a  house,  the  last  objection  would  be  removed  ;  the 
vapors  from  the  consumption  of  the  oil  in  the  lamp  would  pass 
up  the  chimney-flue,  although  there  would,  of  course,  be  no 
smoke.  Moreover,  if  any  one  fears  the  least  danger  from  leav- 
ing a  kerosene  lamp  burning  all  night,  the  chamber  for  holding 
the  lamp  might  be  made  in  such  a  way  that  even  if  any  acci- 
dent occurred  no  harm  could  happen.  It  is  in  this  way  that  I 
shall  arrange  for  the  permanent  adoption  of  this  apparatus  in 
my  own  family. 

I  have  referred  to  these  inventions  in  cooking  as  my  own. 
So  they  are,  in  one  sense.  I  invented  them,  but  there  is  noth- 
ing new  under  the  sun.  It  had  seemed  incredible  to  me  that 
so  simple  a  principle  as  that  of  preventing  the  radiation  of  heat 
by  making  the  outer  walls  of  a  portable  oven  or  stove  of  non- 
conducting material,  should  have  been  overlooked.  After  I  had 
published  the  mode  of  constructing  the  "  Aladdin  "  Cooker,  I 
received  a  copy  of  a  pamphlet  on  penny  dinners  which  are  fur- 
nished to  school  children  in  Newcastle-upon-Tyne,  under  the 
supervision  of  the  Rev.  W.  More  Ede  ;  and  there  I  found  a  de- 
scription of  a  German  invention  which  Mr.  Ede  had  made  use 
of,  corresponding  almost  exactly  to  my  own  idea,  only  in  this 
case  the  apparatus  was  a  fixture  of  a  large  capacity  heated  by 
gas.  I  borrowed  the  idea  from  the  Norwegian  cooking  box, 
adding  the  circulation  of  the  water  and  the  lamp. 

In  regard  to  the  second  invention  of  the  non-conducting  wall 
in  connection  with  dry  heat,  I  concluded  to  apply  for  a  patent 


APPENDIX  II.  121 

in  order  that  it  might  be  introduced  more  rapidly  ;  and  then  I 
found  that  the  identical  invention  had  been  made  and  patented 
by  a  Mr.  W.  Goddard,  in  1831,  only  he  derived  his  heat  from  a 
small  charcoal  furnace.  Of  course,  this  patent  has  expired, 
and  the  device  is  now  pubhc  property.  The  fact  is,  that  inven- 
tions that  have  heretofore  been  made,  but  which  were  impracti- 
cable, are  now  subject  to  use  by  the  application  of  kerosene  oil 
or  cheap  gas  in  place  of  a  solid  fuel. 

But  again,  both  these  inventions  are  crude.  A  professional 
stove-maker  could  doubtless  very  much  improve  the  construc- 
tion of  the  oven  by  giving  special  direction  to  the  current  of 
heat.  In  my  simple  device  the  heat  of  the  upper  chamber  is 
greater  than  that  of  the  lower ;  the  heat  of  the  end  next  the 
lamp  is  greater  than  that  at  the  other  end.  The  average  heat 
is  easily  carried  to  300°.  The  variation  of  heat  is  rather  a 
convenience  than  otherwise,  as  my  cook  has  found  out.  In 
another  oven  on  the  same  principle  I  have  raised  the  heat  to 
450°  with  a  Florence  lamp  carrying  a  four-inch  wick.' 

Again,  when  I  cooked  twenty-five  to  thirty  pounds  of  food 
for  my  Whist  Club  dinner,  the  percentage  of  waste  of  fuel  was 
something  enormous,  although  the  cost  was  less  than  six  cents. 
All  that  I  utilized  was  the  heat  taken  from  the  top  of  the  chim- 

'  The  concentration  of  heat  is  greatest  at  the  top  ;  perhaps  it  would  be 
better  to  make  the  top  of  the  outer  oven  thicker,  so  as  to  check  radiation 
more.  A  A  A  A,  double  metal  wall  filled  in  with  a  non-conductor,  two  or 
three  inches,  carbonate  of  magnesia  or  infusorial  earth  (ttot  asbestos,  as  it  is 
a  good  conductor  of  heat).  The  door  of  the  outer  oven  should  be  made 
the  same  as  the  wall,  two  to  three  inches  thick.  B  B,  sheet-iron  or  copper 
oven.  C  C  C,  circulation  of  hot  air  around  all  sides  of  inner  oven.  D, 
flue  to  receive  hot  air.  E,  brick  or  iron,  to  protect  sheet-metal  from  heat. 
F,  square  cooking-lamp,  or  common  "  Sun  Burner"  lamp  such  as  is  used 
for  lighting.  G  G,  slides  to  close  the  lower  opening,  more  or  less — cut  in 
two  parts,  so  that  one  or  two  lamps  may  be  used  at  one  time,  the  rest  of 
the  opening  being  closed  if  only  one  is  used.  H,  ventilator  to  the  cooking 
or  inner  oven.  Can  be  made  on  orders  by  Kenrick  Brothers,  Brookline, 
Mass. 


122  APPENDIX  II. 

ney  ;  the  potential  of  the  oil  must  be  vastly  greater.  When 
one  considers  that  a  cube  of  coal  of  a  size  that  would  pass 
through  the  rim  of  a  quarter-of-a-dollar  would  drive  a  ton  of 
cargo  with  its  proportion  of  the  weight  of  a  steamship  two 
miles  on  the  ocean,  one  begins  to  realize  the  enormous  waste 
of  fuel  in  cooking  and  in  the  work  of  the  household.  I  think 
the  proportion  of  kerosene  oil  to  thirty  pounds  of  food  ought  not 
to  be  more  than  one  cent's  worth,  and  I  do  not  believe  it  will 
be  more  than  that  when  practical  stove-makers  have  taken  up 
these  crude  ideas  of  my  own  and  have  developed  them  as  fully 
as  they  may  be.  I  will,  therefore,  set  as  the  objective  point  or 
standard  for  inventors  :  to  improve  this  apparatus  so  as  to  use 
a  quantity  not  exceeding  one  cent's  worth  of  kerosene  oil  for 
thoroughly  cooking  the  daily  food  for  a  family  of  ten  persons. 
This  will  be  considered  as  visionary  as  the  statement  which  I 
made  in  1882  that  the  introduction  of  the  system  of  ensilage 
for  feeding  cattle  would  alter  the  equation  in  this  way — "  where 
it  had  been  one  cow  to  four  acres  it  might  become  four  cows  to 
one  acre."  I  have  lately  received  a  statement  from  Mr.  Wm. 
H.  Gilbert,  of  Richland,  N.  Y.,  giving  facts  :  he  states  that  he 
fed  sixty-five  cows  this  last  autumn  and  winter  for  seven  months 
on  the  i)roduct  of  cornstalks  raised  on  fifteen  acres  of  corn 
land,  giving  them,  at  the  same  time,  not  exceeding  five  cents' 
worth  of  grain  per  day,  raised  on  other  parts  of  his  farm  ;  he 
intends  next  winter  to  make  beef  on  ensilage  only,  carrying  the 
corn  for  the  silo  in  the  field  up  to  a  rather  more  mature  growth 
than  is  corn  when  it  is  cut  as  a  green  growth  only. 

The  more  one  investigates  the  food  question  in  this  country 
the  more  apparent  it  becomes  that  the  waste  of  food  and  fuel 
is  greater  than  that  of  any  other  element  of  subsistence. 

My  final  conclusion  is  that,  if  the  average  daily  ration  of  the 
people  were  reduced  to  its  most  wholesome,  nutritious,  and 
digestible  quantity,  but  yet  in  as  great  variety  as  that  now  con- 
sumed or  wasted,  the  difference  accumulated  would  be  equal 
to  the  entire  annual  sum  of  the  additions  to  the  capital  of  the 


APPENDIX  II. 


123 


country  now  made  in  any  one  year.  In  other  words,  the  waste 
of  food  and  fuel  to-day  is  equal  to  the  entire  net  profit  upon 
the  product  of  the  United  States.  This  may  be  readily  be- 
lieved when  the  equation  is  stated  as  follows  : 

Population  60,000,000,  at  five  cents  a  day  each,  wasted,  comes 
to' $1,095,000,000.  Deduct  on  infants  $95,000,000.  Net  loss 
from  bad  cooking  and  waste,  one  thousand  million  dollars'  worth 
of  food  and  fuel  per  year,  Edward  Atkinson. 

P.  S. — Since  this  was  written  I  have  baked  six  loaves  of 
bread  in  two  hours,  with  an  expenditure  of  not  over  half  a 
cent's  worth  of  oil. 


PROSE  MASTERPIECES  FROM  MODERN  ESSAY- 
ISTS :  coinprisiiij;  single  specimen  essays  Irom  Irving,  Leigh  Hunt,  Lamb. 
Do  Quiiiccy,  Landor,  Sydney  Smitli,  Thackeray,  Emerson,  Arnold,  Morley, 
Helps,  Kingsley,  Ruskin,  Lowell,  Carlyle,  Macaulay,  Froude,  Freeman," 
(jladsione,  Newman,  Leslie  Stcj^hcn.  These  essays  have  been  selected 
with  reference  to  presenting  specimens  of  the  method  of  thought  and  the 
literary  style  of  their  several  writers,  and  also  for  the  purpose  of  putting 
into  convenient  shape  for  direct  comparison  the  treatment  given  by  such 
writers  to  similar  subjects. 


The    Mutability    of    Literature,    by 

Irving. 
The  WoKun  of  Books,  by  Hunt. 
I.MrRKFECT  Sympathies,  by  Lamb. 
Conversation,  by  De  Quincey. 
Petition  ok  the  Thugs,  by  Lander. 
Benefits  ok  Parliament,  by  Lander. 
Fallacies,  by  Smith. 
Nil  Nisi  Hokum,  by  Thackeray. 
Compensation,  by  EmersOn. 
Swretnrss  and  Light,  b^'  Arnold. 
Popular  Culture,  by  Morley. 
Art  of  Living  with  Others,  by  Helps. 


My  Winter  Garden,  by  Kingsley. 

Work,  by  Ruskin. 

On  a  Certain  Condescension  in  For- 
eigners, by  Lowell. 

On  History,  by  Carlyle. 

History,  by  Macaulay. 

The  Science  of  History,  by  Froude. 

Race  and  Language,  by  Freeman. 

Kin  Beyond  n  he  Sea,  by  Gladstone. 

Private  Judgment,  by  Newman. 

An  .-Vpolcgy  for  Plain  Speaking,  by 
Stephen. 


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The  Literary  Life. 

The  Chances  of  Literature, 

Concerninfj  Rejected  MSS. 

The  Rewards  of  Literature. 

Literature  as  a  Staff. 

L  iterature 


Vol. 


Thomas  Carlyle.  -  •'■"•fcp.i 

George  Eliot. 

John  Ruskin. 

fohn  itienry  Newman. 

Alfred  Tennyson. 

Ralph  Waldo  Emerson. 

William  Cullen  Bryant. 

Longfellow  and  Whittier. 


CONTENTS : 

Some  Literary  Confessions. 
First  .\ppearance  in  Print. 
Literary  Heroes  and  Hero- Worship. 
Some  Successful  Books. 
The  Seamy  Side  of  Letters. 


AUTHORS. 


jHolmes. 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne. 
Walt  Whitman. 
Bayard  Taylor. 
Swinburne  and  Oscar  Wilde. 
The  Brownings. 
Charles  Dickens. 
William  Makepeace  Thackeray 


Some  Younger  Writers. 

Vol.  III.— pen    PICTURES    OF    EARLIER    VICTORIAN 
AUTHORS. 


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Charlotte  Bronte. 
Washington  Irving. 
Edgar  Allan  Poe. 
Harriet  Martineau. 


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